The Castle Inn Part 38

Mr. Fishwick in a great rage was for insisting; but Sir George stopped him. 'On what terms?' he asked the other.

'If the girl be unharmed, we go unharmed. One and all!' Mr. Dunborough answered. 'Damme!' he continued with a great show of bravado, 'do you think I am going to peach on 'em? Not I. There's the offer, take it or leave it.'

Sir George might have broken down his opposition by the same arguments addressed to his safety which had brought him so far. But time was everything, and Soane was on fire to know the best or worst. 'Agreed!'

he cried. 'Lead the way, sir! And do you, Mr. Fishwick, await me here.'

'We must have time,' Mr. Dunborough grumbled, hesitating, and looking askance at the attorney--he hated him. 'I can't answer for an hour or two. I know a place, and I know another place, and there is another place. And they may be at one or another, or the other. D'you see?'

'I see that it is your business,' Sir George answered with a glance, before which the other's eyes fell. 'Wait until noon, Mr. Fishwick. If we have not returned at that hour, be good enough to swear an information against this gentleman, and set the constables to work.'

Mr. Dunborough muttered that it lay on Sir George's head if ill came of it; but that said, swung sulkily on his heel. Mr. Fishwick, when the two were some way down the street, ran after Soane, and asked in a whisper if his pistols were primed; when he returned satisfied on that point, the servant, whom he had left at the door of the inn, had vanished. The lawyer made a shrewd guess that he would have an eye to his master's safety, and retired into the house with less misgiving.

He got his breakfast early, and afterwards dozed awhile, resting his aching bones in a corner of the coffee-room. It was nine and after, and the tide of life was roaring through the channels of the city when he roused himself, and to divert his suspense and fend off his growing stiffness went out to look about him. All was new to him, but he soon wearied of the main streets, where huge drays laden with puncheons of rum and bales of tobacco threatened to crush him, and tarry seamen, their whiskers hanging in ringlets, jostled him at every crossing.

Turning aside into a quiet court he stood to stare at a humble wedding which was leaving a church. He watched the party out of sight, and then, the church-door standing open, he took the fancy to stroll into the building. He looked about him at the maze of dusty green-cushioned pews with little alleys winding hither and thither among them; at the great three-decker with its huge sounding-board; at the royal escutcheon, and the faded tables of the law, and was about to leave as aimlessly as he had entered, when he espied the open vestry door. Popping in his head, his eye fell on a folio bound in sheepskin, that lay open on a chest, a pen and ink beside it.

The attorney was in that state of fatigue of body and languor of mind in which the least trifle amuses. He tip-toed in, his hat in his hand, and licking his lips as he thought of the law-cases that lay enshrined between those covers, he perused a couple of entries with a kind of professional enthusiasm. He was beginning a third, which, being by a different hand, was a little hard to decipher, when a black gown that hung on a hook over against him swung noiselessly outward from the wall, and a little old man emerged from the doorway which it masked.

The lawyer, who was stooping over the register, raised himself guiltily. 'Hallo!' he said, to cover his confusion.

'Hallo!' the old man answered with a wintry smile. 'A shilling, if you please.' And he held out his hand.

'Oh!' said Mr. Fishwick, much chap-fallen, 'I was only just--looking out of curiosity.'

'It is a shilling to look,' the newcomer retorted with a chuckle. 'Only one year, I think? Just so, anno domini seventeen hundred and sixty-seven. A shilling, if you please.'

Mr. Fishwick hesitated, but in the end professional pride swayed him, he drew out the coin, and grudgingly handed it over. 'Well,' he said, 'it is a shilling for nothing. But, I suppose, as you have caught me, I must pay.'

'I've caught a many that way,' the old fellow answered as he pouched the shilling. 'But there, I do a lot of work upon them. There is not a better register kept anywhere than that, nor a parish clerk that knows more about his register than I do, though I say it that should not. It is clear and clean from old Henry Eighth, with never a break except at the time of the siege, and, by the way, there is an entry about that that you could see for another shilling. No? Well, if you would like to see a year for nothing--No? Now, I know a lad, an attorney's clerk here, name of Chatterton, would give his ears for the offer. Perhaps your name is Smith?' the old fellow continued, looking curiously at Mr. Fishwick.

'If it is, you may like to know that the name of Smith is in the register of burials just three hundred-and eighty-three times--was last Friday! Oh, it is not Smith? Well, if it is Brown, it is there two hundred and seventy times--and one over!'

'That is an odd thought of yours,' said the lawyer, staring at the conceit.

'So many have said,' the old man chuckled. 'But it is not Brown? Jones, perhaps? That comes two hundred and--Oh, it is not Jones?'

'It is a name you won't be likely to have once, let alone four hundred times!' the lawyer answered, with a little pride--heaven knows why.

'What may it be, then?' the clerk asked, fairly put on his mettle. And he drew out a pair of gla.s.ses, and settling them on his forehead looked fixedly at his companion.

'Fishwick.'

'Fishwick! Fishwick? Well, it is not a common name, and I cannot speak to it at this moment. But if it is here, I'll wager I'll find it for you. D'you see, I have them here in alphabet order,' he continued, bustling with an important air to a cupboard in the wall, whence he produced a thick folio bound in roughened calf. 'Ay, here's Fishwick, in the burial book, do you see, volume two, page seventeen, anno domini 1750, seventeen years gone, that is. Will you see it? 'Twill be only a shilling. There's many pays out of curiosity to see their names.'

Mr. Fishwick shook his head.

'Dods! man, you shall!' the old clerk cried generously; and turned the pages. 'You shall see it for what you have paid. Here you are.

"_Fourteenth of September, William Fishwick, aged eighty-one, barber, West Quay, died the eleventh of the month_." No, man, you are looking too low. Higher on the page! Here 'tis, do you see? Eh--what is it?

What's the matter with you?'

'Nothing,' Mr. Fishwick muttered. But he continued to stare at the page with a face struck suddenly sallow, while the hand that rested on the corner of the book shook as with the ague.

'Nothing?' the old man said, staring suspiciously at him. 'I do believe it is something. I do believe it is money. Well, it is five shillings to extract. So there!'

That seemed to change Mr. Fishwick's view. 'It might be money,' he confessed, still speaking thickly, and as if his tongue were too large for his mouth. 'It might be,' he repeated. 'But--I am not very well this morning. Do you think you could get me a gla.s.s of water?'

'None of that!' the old man retorted sharply, with a sudden look of alarm. 'I would not leave you alone with that book at this moment for all the shillings I have taken! So if you want water you've got to get it.'

'I am better now,' Mr. Fishwick answered. But the sweat that stood on his brow went far to belie his words. 'I--yes, I think I'll take an extract. Sixty-one, was he?'

'Eighty-one, eighty-one, it says. There's pen and ink, but you'll please to give me five shillings before you write. Thank you kindly. Lord save us, but that is not the one. You're taking out the one above it.'

'I'll have 'em all--for identification,' Mr. Fishwick replied, wiping his forehead nervously.

'Sho! You have no need.'

'I think I will.'

'What, all?'

'Well, the one before and the one after.'

'Dods! man, but that will be fifteen shillings!' the clerk cried, aghast at such extravagance.

'You'll only charge for the entry I want?' the lawyer said with an effort.

'Well--we'll say five shillings for the other two.'

Mr. Fishwick closed with the offer, and with a hand which was still unsteady paid the money and extracted the entries. Then he took his hat, and hurriedly, his eyes averted, turned to go.

'If it's money,' the old clerk said, staring at him as if he could never satisfy his inquisitiveness, 'you'll not forget me?'

'If it's money,' Mr. Fishwick said with a ghastly smile, 'it shall be some in your pocket.'

'Thank you kindly. Thank you kindly, sir! Now who would ha' thought when you stepped in here you were stepping into fortune, so to speak?'

'Just so,' Mr. Fishwick answered, a spasm distorting his face. 'Who'd have thought it? Good morning!'

'And good-luck!' the clerk bawled after him. 'Good-luck!'

Mr. Fishwick fluttered a hand backward, but made no answer. His first object was to escape from the court; this done, he plunged through a stream of traffic, and having covered his trail, went on rapidly, seeking a quiet corner. He found one in a square among some warehouses, and standing, pulled out the copy he had made from the register. It was neither on the first nor the second entry, however, that his eyes dwelled, while the hand that held the paper shook as with the ague. It was the third fascinated him:--

'_September 19th,_' it ran, '_at the Bee in Steep Street, Julia, daughter of Anthony and Julia Soane of Estcombe, aged three, and buried the 21st of the month_.'

Mr. Fishwick read it thrice, his lips quivering; then he slowly drew from a separate pocket a little sheaf of papers, frayed at the corners, and soiled with much and loving handling. He selected from these a slip; it was one of those which Mr. Thoma.s.son had surprised on the table in the room at the Castle Inn. It was a copy of the attestation of birth 'of Julia, daughter of Anthony Soane, of Estcombe, England, and Julie his wife'; the date, August, 1747; the place, Dunquerque.

The Attorney drew a long quivering breath, and put the papers up again, the packet in the place from which he had taken it, the extract from the Bristol register in another pocket. Then, after drawing one or two more sighs as if his heart were going out of him, he looked dismally upwards as in protest against heaven. At length he turned and went back to the thoroughfare, and there, with a strangely humble air, asked a pa.s.ser-by the nearest way to Steep Street.

The man directed him; the place was near at hand. In two minutes Mr.

Fishwick found himself at the door of a small but decent grocer's shop, over the portal of which a gilded bee seemed to prognosticate more business than the fact performed. An elderly woman, stout and comfortable-looking, was behind the counter. Eyeing the attorney as he came forward, she asked him what she could do for him, and before he could answer reached for the snuff canister.