Nicky-Nan, Reservist Part 10

"You mustn't mind my bein' easily alarmed--left alone as I be with a family--"

"Not in the least, ma'am." Nicky-Nan resolutely closed the door and lifted his candle to confirm the miracle.

The candle, which had been guttering, shot up one last flame and died on a flicker of gold.

CHAPTER VII.

"QUID NON MORTALIA PECTORA . . ."

A moment later Nicky-Nan took a step to the door, half-repentant, on an impulse to call Mrs Penhaligon back and bid her fetch a candle.

G.o.d knows how much of subsequent trouble he might have spared himself by obeying that impulse: for Mrs Penhaligon was a woman honest as the day; and withal had a head on her shoulders, shrewd enough--practised indeed--in steering the clumsy male mind for its good.

But, as we have recorded, Nicky-Nan, having suffered in early life from a woman, had been turned to a distrust of the s.e.x; a general distrust which preoccupied with its shadow the bright exception that, on a second thought, he was ready enough to recognise in Mrs Penhaligon.

This second thought came too late, however. He took one step towards the door, guided by the glimmer, beneath it, of her retreating candle. His hand even fumbled for the latch, and found it. But a sudden shyness seized him and he drew back. He heard her footsteps creaking on the party-stairs: heard the sound of her door softly closed, then the sound of a bolt thrust home in its socket; and turned to face darkness.

His brain worked quite clearly. He guessed well enough what had happened. In his youth he had often listened, without taking note of their talk, while his elders debated how it came about that the Old Doctor had left, beyond some parcels of real estate--cottage property for the most part, the tenants of which were notoriously lax in paying their rents--but a very few personal effects. There were book debts in an inordinate ma.s.s; and the heirs found an inordinate difficulty in collecting them, since the inhabitants of Polpier--a hardy sea-faring race--had adopted a cheerful custom of paying for deliverance from one illness when they happened (if ever they did) to contract another: and this custom they extended even to that branch of medical service which by tradition should be rewarded in ready money. ("I always," explained a Polpier matron, "pays 'en ver one when I engages 'en ver the next; an' the laast I'll never pay ver"-- and she never did.) On top of this, Polpier folk argued that doctoring wasn't, like property, a gift which a man could pa.s.s on to his heirs, and most certainly not if they happened to be--as they were--a corn-factor and an aged maiden sister of independent but exiguous means. "As _I_ look at it," some one put this argument, on the Quay, "th' Old Doctor's mastery was a thing to hisself, and a proper marvel at that. Us brought nothin' into the world, my sons an' us can't carry nothin' out: but that don't mean as you can leave it behind--leastways, not when it takes the form of professional skill. . . . Why, put it to yourselves. Here's th' old man gone up for his reward: an' you can hear th' Almighty sayin', 'Well done, thou good an' faithful servant.'"--"Amen," from the listeners.-- "Yes, an' 'The labourer is worthy of his hire,' and what not.

'Well, then,' the Lord goes on, flatterin'-like, 'what about that there talent I committed to 'ee? For I d' know _you_'re not the sort to go hidin' it in a napkin.' An' d' 'ee reckon th' old chap'll be cuttin' such a figure as to own up, 'Lord, I left it to a corn-merchant'? Ridic'lous to suppose! . . . _The Lord giveth, an'

the Lord taketh away_. . . . With cottage property, I grant 'ee, 'tis another thing. Cottage property don't go on all-fours."

Nicky-Nan, then, guessed well enough what had happened. Almost in a flash he had guessed it.

He had surprised the Old Doctor's secret, hidden all these years.

Folks used to make h.o.a.rds of their money in the bygone days, when Napoleon threatened to invade us and deposit banks were scarce.

And the Doctor, by all that tradition told, was never a man to break a habit once formed. For more than the span of two generations this wealth had lain concealed; and now _he--he_, Nicholas Nanjivell--was a rich man, if only he played his cards well!

With how sure an instinct he had clung to the old house!--had held on to this relic of a past gentility to which by rights he belonged!

He was a rich man now, and would defy Pamphlett and all his works--

How pleasant it is to have money, heigho!

How pleasant it is to have money!--

if only he knew how much!

And yet . . . Although philosophers in all ages have descanted on the blessings of Hope, and the part played by Imagination in making tolerable the business of living--so that men in the ma.s.s not only carry life through with courage but will turn and fight desperately for it, like stags at bay--it is to be doubted if one in ten ever guesses how constantly he is sustained by this spirit scorning the substance, gallantly blind, with promises lifting him over defeat.

I dare to say that, save for the strength of hope it put into him, this wealth, so suddenly poured at Nicky-Nan's feet, doubled his discomfort, physical and mental.

Of his physical discomfort, just now, there could be no question.

He could not find courage to leave his trove and climb the stairs back to his bedroom. Some one might rob him while he slept, and-- horror!--he would never even know of how much he had been robbed.

The anguish in his leg forbade his standing sentry: the night wanted almost three hours of dawn. Shirt and trousers were his only garments.

He knelt and groped on the stone floor to a corner clear of the fallen rubbish. On his way his fingers encountered a coin and clutched it--comfort, tangible proof that he had not been dreaming.

He seated himself in the corner, propping his back there, and fell to speculating--sensing the coin in his palm, fingering it from time to time.

The Old Doctor had always, in his lifetime, been accounted a well-to-do man. . . . Very likely he had started this h.o.a.rd in Bonaparte's days, and had gone on adding to it in the long years of peace. . . . It would certainly be a hundred pounds. It might be a thousand. One thousand pounds!

But no--not so fast! Put it at a hundred only, and daylight would be the unlikelier to bring disappointment. The scattered coins he had seen by that one brief flash of the candle danced and multiplied themselves before his eyes like dots of fire in the darkness.

Still he resolutely kept their numbers down to one hundred.

A hundred pounds! . . . Why, that, or even fifty, meant all the difference in life to him. He could look Pamphlett in the face now.

He would step down to the Bank to-morrow, slap seven sovereigns down on the counter--but not too boldly; for Pamphlett must not suspect-- and demand the change in silver, with his receipt. Full quittance-- he could see Pamphlett's face as he fetched forth the piece of paper and made out that quittance, signing his name across a postage stamp.

Not once in the course of his vision-building did it cross Nicky-Nan's mind that the money was--that it could be--less than legitimately his. Luck comes late to some men; to others, never.

It had come late to him, yet in the nick of time, as a G.o.dsend.

His family and the Old Doctor's had intermarried, back along, quite in the old days; or so he had heard. . . . Nicky-Nan knew nothing of any law about treasure-trove. Wealth arrived to men as it befell or as they deserved; and, any way, "findings was keepings." His notion of other folks' concern in this money reached no further than a vague fear of folks in general--that they might rob him or deprive him of it in some way. He must go to work cautiously.

Thus out of despair Fortune lifted him and began to install him in fear.

He must go to work _very_ cautiously. Being all unused to the possession of money, but accustomed to consider it as a weapon of which fortunate men obtained a hold to employ it in "besting" others less fortunate, he foresaw endless calls upon his cunning. But this did not forbid his indulging in visions in which--being also at bottom good-natured--he pictured himself as playing the good genius in his native town, earning general grat.i.tude, building in a large-handed way the new pier that was so badly needed, conferring favours right and left, departing this life amid the mourning of the township, perchance (who could tell?) surviving for the wonder of generations to come in a carved statue at the Quay-head. He had observed, in the ports he had visited abroad, such statues erected in memory of men he had never heard tell of. It would be a mighty fine thing--though a novelty in Polpier--to have one's memory kept alive in this fashion. . . . He would lord it in life too, as became a Nanjivell--albeit the last of the race. To the Penhaligon family he would be specially kind. . . . Upon other deserving ones he would confer surprising help by stealth. . . . He wished now that, in spite of experience, he had married and begotten children--an heir at least. It would be a fine thing to restore the stock to a prospect of honour. He wondered that in the past he had never realised his plain duty in this light and taken the risk. As it was, the old name could only be preserved in a commonalty's grat.i.tude.

The flagged floor galled him cruelly; for he was of lean build.

Shift his posture or his weight as he might, after a few seconds'

ease his haunch-pins were pressing again upon the pavement, with no cushion of flesh but a crushed nerve or two that kept telephoning misery to his knee and fetching fierce darts of pain for response.

A quick succession of these, running into one as though a red-hot iron had been applied under the thigh, searing it to the very bone, stabbed suddenly into his brain with a new terror. He had forgotten the anonymous letter and its threat!

He was a rich man now. The business of a rich man was to stay at home and preserve his riches while making use of them-like Pamphlett. Who in this world ever heard of a rich man being hauled off to serve in the Navy as a common seaman? The thing was unprecedented. He could buy himself out; at the worst by paying up the money he had drawn.

Yes, but this would involve disclosing his wealth, and the source of it. . . . He was terribly afraid of publicity. He had enemies, as the letter proved: he suspected that the law itself might be another enemy--you could never predict which side the law would take--and between them, if they got to know his secret, they would despoil him.

. . . On the other hand if, covering his secret, he opposed but a pa.s.sive resistance, they might carry him off to jail, and then all this money would be laid bare to the world. Intolerable exposure!

He must hide it. . . . He must count it, and then--having staved off Pamphlett--hide it tomorrow with all speed and cunning. When would the dawn come?

The sun, in the longitude of Polpier, was actually due to rise a few minutes before five o'clock. But Polpier (as I have told) lies in a deep cleft of the hills. Nicky-Nan's parlour looked out on a mere slit at the bottom of that cleft; and, moreover, the downfall of plaster blocked half the lower portion of its tiny dirty window.

What with one hindrance and another, it was almost a quarter past five before daylight began to glimmer in the parlour. It found him on his knees--not in prayer, nor in thanksgiving, but eagerly feeling over the grey pile of rubbish and digging into it with clawed fingers.

An hour later, with so much of daylight about him as the window permitted, he was still on his knees. Already he had collected more than a hundred golden coins, putting them together in piles of twenty.

The dawn had been chilly: but he was warm enough by this time.

Indeed, sweat soaked his shirt; beads of sweat gathered on his grey eyebrows, and dripped, sometimes on his hands, sometimes on the pile of old plaster--greyish-white, and fine almost as wood-ash--into which they dug and dug, tearing the thin lathes aside, pouncing on each coin brought to the surface.

Once only--though the kneeling cost him torture, and the sweat came no less from anguish than from exertion--did he pause and straighten himself up to listen. Upstairs the Penhaligon children had awakened with the daylight and were talking--chirruping like sparrows--before they left their beds--

Hey! now the day dawis; The joly c.o.c.k crawis . . .

--but Nicky-Nan toiled on in his dim parlour, collecting wealth.

By eight o'clock he had picked up and arranged--still in neat piles of twenty--some eight hundred coins of golden money. His belly was fasting: but he had forgotten the crust in the cupboard. Had he not here enough to defray a king's banquet?

Some one tapped on the door. Nicky-Nan, startled, raised himself upright on his knees and called in a tremor--

"No admittance!"

As he staggered up and made for the door, to press his weight against it, Mrs Penhaligon spoke on the other side.