Birds of Prey Part 25

"They were written in a period when n.o.body wrote short letters,"

answered Mr. Goodge sententiously,--"the period of Bath post and dear postage. The greater number of the epistles cover three sides of a sheet of letter-paper; and Mrs. Rebecca's caligraphy was small and neat."

"Good!" I exclaimed. "I suppose it is no use my asking you to let me see one of these letters before striking a bargain--eh, Mr. Goodge?"

"Well, I think not," answered the oily old hypocrite. "I have taken counsel, and I will abide by the light that has been shown me. 'If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself;' such are the words of inspiration. No, I think not."

"And what do you ask for the forty odd letters?"

"Twenty pounds."

"A stiff sum, Mr. Goodge, for forty sheets of old letter-paper."

"But if they were not likely to be valuable, you would scarcely happen to want them," answered the minister. "I have taken counsel, young man."

"And those are your lowest terms?"

"I cannot accept sixpence less. It is not in me to go from my word. As Jacob served Laban seven years, and again another seven years, having promised, so do I abide by my bond. Having said twenty pounds, young man, Heaven forbid that I should take so much as twenty pence less than those twenty pounds!"

The solemn unction with which he p.r.o.nounced this twaddle is beyond description. The pretence of conscientious feeling which he contrived to infuse into his sordid bargain-driving might have done honour to Moliere's Tartuffe. Seeing that he was determined to stick to his terms, I departed. I telegraphed to Sheldon for instructions as to whether I was to give Goodge the money he asked, and then went back to my inn, where I devoted myself for the next ten minutes to the study of a railway time-table, with a view to finding the best route to Spotswold.

After a close perusal of bewildering strings of proper names and dazzling columns of figures, I found a place called Black Harbour, "for Wisborough, Spotswold, and Chilton." A train left Ullerton for Black Harbour at six o'clock in the afternoon, and was due at the latter place at 8.40.

This gave me an interval of some hours, in which I could do nothing, unless I received a telegram from Sheldon. The chance of a reply from him kept me a prisoner in the coffee-room of the Swan Inn, where I read almost every line in the local and London newspapers pending the arrival of the despatch, which came at last.

"Tell Goodge he shall have the sum asked, and get the letters at once.

Money by to-night's post."

This was Sheldon's message; sharp and short, and within the eighteen penny limit. Acting upon this telegram, I returned to the abode of Mr.

Goodge, told him his terms were to be complied with, showed him the telegram, at his request, and asked for the letters.

I ought to have known my reverend friend better than to imagine he would part with those ancient doc.u.ments except for money upon the counter.

He smiled a smile which might have illuminated the visage of Machiavelli.

"The letters have kept a long time, young man," he said, after having studied the telegram as closely as if it had been written in Punic; "and lo you, they are in nowise the worse for keeping: so they will keep yet longer. 'If thou be wise, then shalt be wise for thyself.' You can come for the letters tomorrow, and bring the money with you. Say at 11 A.M."

I put on my hat and bade my friend good day. I have often been tempted to throw things at people, and have withheld my hand; but I never felt Satan so strong upon me as at that moment, and I very much fear that if I had had anything in the way of a kitchen-poker or a carving-knife about me, I should have flung that missile at the patriarchal head of my saintly Jonah. As it was, I bade him good day and returned to the Swan, where I took a hurried repast and started for the station, carrying a light carpet-bag with me, as I was not likely to return till the following night, at the earliest.

I arrived at the station ten minutes before the starting of the train, and had to endure ten minutes of that weariness called waiting. I exhausted the interest of all the advertis.e.m.e.nts on the station walls; found out how I could have my furniture removed with the utmost convenience--supposing myself to possess furniture; discovered where I ought to buy a dinner-service, and the most agreeable kind of blind to screen my windows in sunny weather. I was still lingering over the description of this new invention in blinds, when a great bell set up a sudden clanging, and the down train from London came thundering into the station.

This was also the train for Black Harbour. There were a good many pa.s.sengers going northwards, a good many alighting at Ullerton; and in the hurry and confusion I had some difficulty in finding a place in a second-cla.s.s carriage, the pa.s.sengers therein blocking up the windows with that unamiable exclusiveness peculiar to railway travellers. I found a place at last, however; but in hurrying from carriage to carriage I was startled by an occurrence which I have since pondered very seriously.

I ran bolt against my respected friend and patron Horatio Paget.

We had only time to recognise each other with exclamations of mutual surprise when the clanging bell rang again, and I was obliged to scuffle into my seat. A moment's delay would have caused me to be left behind. And to have remained behind would have been very awkward for me; as the Captain would undoubtedly have questioned me as to my business in Ullerton. Was I not supposed to be at Dorking, enjoying the hospitality of an aged aunt?

It would have been unlucky to lose that train.

But what "makes" the gallant Captain in Ullerton? That is a question which I deliberated as the train carried me towards Black Harbour.

Sheldon warned me of the necessity for secrecy, and I have been as secret as the grave. It is therefore next to an impossibility that Horatio Paget can have any idea of the business I am engaged in. He is the very man of all others to try and supersede me if he had an inkling of my plans; but I am convinced he can have no such inkling.

And yet the advertis.e.m.e.nt of the Haygarth property in the _Times_ was as open to the notice of all the world as it was open to the notice of George Sheldon. What if my patron should have been struck by the same advertis.e.m.e.nt, and should have come to Ullerton on the same business?

It is possible, but it is not likely. When I left town the Captain was engaged in Philip Sheldon's affairs. He has no doubt come to Ullerton on Philip Sheldon's business. The town, which seems an abomination of desolation to a man who is accustomed to London and Paris, is nevertheless a commercial centre; and the stockbroker's schemes may involve the simple Ullertonians, as well as the more experienced children of the metropolis.

Having thought the business out thus, I gave myself no further trouble about the unexpected appearance of my friend and benefactor.

At Black Harbour I found a coach, which carried me to Spotswold, whither I travelled in a cramped and painful position as regards my legs, and with a pervading sensation which was like a determination of luggage to the brain, so close to my oppressed head was the heavily-laden roof of the vehicle. It was pitch dark when I and two fellow-pa.s.sengers of agricultural aspect were turned out of the coach at Spotswold, which in the gloom of night appeared to consist of half a dozen houses shut in from the road by ghastly white palings, a grim looming church, and a low-roofed inn with a feeble light glimmering athwart a red stuff curtain.

At this inn I was fain to take up my abode for the night, and was conducted to a little whitewashed bedchamber, draperied with scanty dimity and smelling of apples--the humblest, commonest cottage chamber, but clean and decent, and with a certain countrified aspect which was pleasing to me. I fancied myself the host of such an inn, with Charlotte for my wife; and it seemed to me that it would be nice to live in that remote and unknown village, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot." I beguiled myself by such foolish fancies--I, who have been reared amidst the clamour and riot of the Strand!

Should I be happy with that dear girl if she were mine? Alas! I doubt it. A man who has led a disreputable life up to the age of seven-and-twenty is very likely to have lost all capacity for such pure and perfect happiness as that which good men find in the tranquil haven of a home.

Should I not hear the rattle of the billiard-b.a.l.l.s, or the voice of the _croupier_ calling the main, as I sat by my quiet fireside? Should I not yearn for the glitter and confusion of West-end dancing-rooms, or the mad excitement of the ring, while my innocent young wife was sitting by my side and asking me to look at the blue eyes of my first-born?

No; Charlotte is not for me. There must be always the two cla.s.ses--the sheep and the goats; and my lot has been cast among the goats.

And yet there are some people who laugh to scorn the doctrines of Calvin, and say there is no such thing as predestination.

Is there not predestination? Was not I predestined to be born in a gaol and reared in a gutter, educated among swindlers and scoundrels, fed upon stolen victuals, and clad in garments never to be paid for? Did no Eumenides preside over the birth of Richard Savage, so set apart for misery that the laws of nature were reversed, and even his mother hated him? Did no dismal fatality follow the footsteps of Chatterton? Has no mysterious ban been laid upon the men who have been called Dukes of Buckingham?

What foolish lamentations am I scribbling in this diary, which is intended to be only the baldest record of events! It is so natural to mankind to complain, that, having no ear in which to utter his discontent, a man is fain to resort to pen and ink.

I devoted my evening to conversation with the landlord and his wife, but found that the name of Haygarth was as strange to them as if it had been taken from an inscription in the tomb of the Pharaohs. I inquired about the few inhabitants of the village, and ascertained that the oldest man in the place is the s.e.xton, native-born, and supposed by mine host never to have travelled twenty miles from his birthplace. His name is Peter Drabbles. What extraordinary names that cla.s.s of people contrive to have! My first business to-morrow morning will be to find my friend Drabbles--another ancient mariner, no doubt--and to examine the parish registers.

_Oct. 7th_. A misty morning, and a perpetual drizzle--to say nothing of a damp, penetrating cold, which creeps through the thickest overcoat, and chills one to the bone. I do not think Spotswold can have much brightness or prettiness even on the fairest summer morning that ever beautified the earth. I know that, seen as I see it to-day, the place is the very archetype of all that is darksome, dull, desolate, dismal, and dreary. (How odd, by the way, that all that family of epithets should have the same initial!) A wide stretch of moorland lies around and about the little village, which crouches in a hollow, like some poor dejected animal that seeks to shelter itself from the bitter blast. On the edge of the moorland, and above the straggling cottages and the little inn, rises the ma.s.sive square tower of an old church, so far out of proportion to the pitiful cl.u.s.ter of houses, that I imagine it must be the remnant of some monastic settlement.

Towards this church I made my way, under the dispiriting drip, drip of the rain, and accompanied by a feeble old man, who is s.e.xton, clerk, gravedigger, and anything or everything of an official nature.

We went into the church after my ancient mariner No. 2 had fumbled a good deal with a bunch of ghostly-looking keys. The door opened with a dismal scroop, and shut with an appalling bang. Grim and dark as the church is without, it is grimmer and darker within, and damp and vault-like, _a faire fremir_. There are all the mysterious cupboards and corners peculiar to such edifices; an organ-loft, from which weird noises issue at every opening or closing of a door; a vaulted roof, which echoes one's footsteps with a moan, as of some outraged spirit hovering in empty s.p.a.ce, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. piteously, "Another impious intruder after the sacramental plate! another plebeian sole trampling on the bra.s.ses of the De Montacutes, lords of the manor!"

The vestry is, if anything, more ghostly than the general run of vestries; but the business mind is compelled to waive all considerations of a supernatural character. For the moment there flashed across my brain the shadows of all the Christmas stories I had ever read or heard concerning vestries; the phantom bridal, in which the bride's beautiful white hand changed to the bony fingers of a skeleton as she signed the register; the unearthly christening, in which all at once, after the ceremony having been conducted with the utmost respectability, to the edification of the unauthorised intruder hiding behind a pillar, the G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers, nurse and baby, priest and clerk, became in a moment dilapidated corpses; whereon the appalled intruder fell p.r.o.ne at the foot of his pillar, there to be discovered the next morning by his friends, and the public generally, with his hair blanched to an awful whiteness, or his n.o.ble intellect degraded to idiocy. For a moment, the memory of about a hundred Christmas stories was too much for me--so weird of aspect and earthy of atmosphere was the vestry at Spotswold. And then "being gone" the shadows of the Christmas stories, I was a man and a lawyer's clerk again, and set myself a.s.siduously to search the registers and interrogate my ancient.

I found that individual a creature of mental fogginess compared with whom my oldest inhabitant of Ullerton would have been a Pitt, Earl of Chatham. But I questioned and cross-questioned him until I had in a manner turned his poor old wits the seamy side without, and had discovered, first, that he had never known any one called Haygarth in the whole course of those seventy-five years' vegetation which politeness compelled me to speak of as his "life;" secondly, that he had never known any one who knew a Haygarth; thirdly, that he was intimately acquainted with every creature in the village, and that he knew that no one of the inhabitants could give me the smallest shred of such information as I required.

Having extorted so much as this from my ancient with unutterable expenditure of time and trouble, I next set to work upon the registers.

If the ink manufactured in the present century is of no more durable nature than that abominable fluid employed in the penmanship of a hundred years ago, I profoundly pity the generations that are to come after us. The registers of Spotswold might puzzle a Bunsen. However, bearing in mind the incontrovertible fact that three thousand pounds is a very agreeable sum of money, I stuck to my work for upwards of two hours, and obtained as a result the following entries:--

"1. Matthew Haygarthe, aged foure yeares, berrid in this churcheyarde, over against ye tombe off Mrs. Marttha Stileman, about 10 fete fromm ye olde yue tre. Febevarie 6th, 1753."

"2. Mary Haygarthe, aged twentie sevene yeers, berrid under ye yue tree, Nov. 21, 1754."

After copying these two entries, I went out into the churchyard to look for Mary Haygarth's grave.

Under a fine old yew--which had been old a hundred years ago, it seems--I found huddled amongst other headstones one so incrusted with moss, that it was only after sc.r.a.ping the parasite verdure from the stone with my penknife that I was able to discover the letters that had been cut upon it. I found at last a brief inscription:

"Here lieth ye body of MARY HAYGARTH, aged 27. Born 1727. Died 1754.

This stone has been set up by one who sorroweth without hope of consolation." A strange epitaph: no sc.r.a.p of Latin, no text from Scripture, no conventional testimony to the virtues and accomplishments of the departed, no word to tell whether the dead woman had been maid, wife, or widow. It was the most provoking inscription for a lawyer or a genealogist, but such as might have pleased a poet.