Part 2

‘Just so; and you can have it; but the fellows know its full value, and mean to have it. Look at that.’

He handed him a paper containing the statement of the terms on which the land in question was to be sold. Philip read it carefully, frowned, and tossed it back to his agent.

‘Ridiculous!’ he exclaimed. ‘They must have thought you were acting for the government or a railway company. I believe it is considered legitimate to fleece _them_. Half the money is what I will give, and no more.’

When a clever man thinks he has performed a particularly clever trick, and finds that, by some instinct of self-preservation, the person to be tricked upsets all his calculations, whilst there still remains a chance of persuading him that he is making a mistake, there comes over the clever person a peculiar change. It is like a sudden lull in the wind: he shows neither surprise nor regret on his own part, but a certain respectful pity for the blindness of the other in not seeing the advantage offered him. So with Wrentham at this moment. He left the paper lying on the table, as if it had no further interest for him, and took out his cigar-case.

‘You don’t mind a cigar, I suppose?... Have one?’

‘Thank you. Here is some sherry: help yourself.’

Wrentham helped himself, lit his cigar, and sank back on an easy-chair, like a man whose day’s work is done, and who feels that he has earned the right to rest comfortably.

‘I’ve been trotting between pillar and post about that land all day,’ he said languidly, ‘because I fancied you had set your mind on it; and now I feel as tired as if I had been doing a thousand miles in a thousand hours. Glad it’s over.’

‘You do not think it is worth making the offer, then?’

‘My dear boy, they would think we were making fun of them, and be angry.’

Wrentham rolled the cigar between his fingers and smiled complacently.

‘Surely, they must be aware that the price they are asking is absurd—they cannot hope to obtain it from any one in his senses. Look at this paragraph: there is land bought by the corporation yesterday—it is almost within the city, and the price is more than a third less than these people are asking from us.’

Wrentham’s eyes twinkled over the paragraph.

‘Ah, yes; but, you see, these people were obliged to sell; ours are not. However, we need not bother about it. They require more than you will give, and there is an end of it. The question is, what are we to do now?’

‘Take land farther out, where the owners will be more reasonable, and we can reduce our rents so as to cover the railway fares.’

‘But the farther out you go, the more difficulty you will have in finding workmen.’

‘I have thought of that, and have secured an excellent foreman, who will bring us the labourers we require; and for the skilled workmen, an advertisement will find them.’

‘And who is the man you have engaged?’

‘Caleb Kersey.’

Wrentham laughed softly as he emitted a long serpentine coil of smoke.

‘On my word, you do things in a funny way. I am supposed to be your counsellor as well as friend; and you complete your arrangements before you tell me anything about them. I don’t see that my services are of any use to you.’

‘We have not had time to find that out yet. What advice could you have given me in reference to Kersey?’

‘Oh, I have nothing to say against the man, except that, as soon as you had your establishment ready to begin operations, he would have every soul in your employment out on strike for higher wages or for new terms of agreement, which will cause you heavy loss whether you knuckle down or refuse. I know the kind of man: he will be meek enough until he gets you into a corner—or thinks he has—and then he turns round and tells you that he is master of the situation, whatever you may be. That’s his sort.’

‘I think you are mistaken, Wrentham. I am sure that you are mistaken so far as Kersey is concerned. He managed that business of the harvest for my father when nobody else could, and he managed it admirably. He wants nothing more than fair-play between master and man, and he believes that my scheme is likely to bring about that condition.’

‘All right,’ said Wrentham, smiling, and helping himself to another glass of wine; ‘here’s good luck to him—and to you. We are all naturally inclined to be pleased with the people who agree with us. We’ll say that I am mistaken, and, on my honour, I hope it may be so.’

Philip flushed a little: he could not help feeling that Wrentham was treating him as if he were a child at play, and did not or could not see that he was a man making a bold experiment and very much in earnest.

‘It is not merely because Kersey agrees with me that I have engaged him,’ he said warmly. ‘I know something about the man, and I have learned a good deal from him. He has the power to convey my meaning to others better than I could do it myself. They might doubt me at first; they will trust him; and he is one of those men who are willing to work.’

‘That is everything you want in the meanwhile, except the land on which to begin operations. I promised to take your answer back to these people by four o’clock. I shall have just time to drive to their office. I suppose that there is nothing to say except that we cannot touch it at the price?’

‘Nothing more.’

‘Very well. I will report progress to-morrow; but I have no expectation of bringing them down to your figure. Good-day.’

Although Wrentham bustled out as if in a hurry, he descended the stairs slowly.

‘He may have gone in for a mad scheme,’ he was thinking; ‘but he is a deal ’cuter in his way of setting about it than I bargained for.... This is confoundedly awkward for me.... Must get out of it somehow.’

(_To be continued._)

MY OLD COLLEGE ROOMS.

No easy task would it be to analyse the medley of conflicting emotions that run riot in the heart of an old ’varsity man revisiting the haunts of his academical ‘auld langsyne.’ Even were I equal to it, I would not publish the results of my experiment. Far too sacred, too personal, at least for the pages of a magazine, were my own thoughts and memories the other day, as I stealthily stole up my old staircase in ——’s, Oxford. ‘Stealthily stole,’ I say advisedly; for I felt unpleasantly more like a burglar in my pilgrim-ascent, than a respectable country clergyman. In a university sense, generations had passed away since my college days; since I, in my generation, was wont to rollick in and out of those ancient ‘oaks’ and about those venerable banisters. One felt a kind of sad impression that one belonged to a bygone age; that one’s only rightful _locus standi_ in the university now was a shelf in the fossil department of its museum; that one was _de trop_ in this land of the living; that one was ‘unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown,’ a sort of college ghost that ought long since to have been laid. But now, the gray goose-quill would fain flutter on, by the page, with emotions which, as I have said, are too sacred for publication. I will confine myself to more exoteric details. At the funny old cupola-like entrance—where, on the first impulse, I found myself all but taking off my hat to the ‘silent speaking’ stones of its venerable, unsightly pile—I had met a porter, but not _the_ porter. On the staircase I had met a scout, but not _the_ scout. No civil salute and smile of recognition from either of those; only a curious stare—a look that seemed to ask, ‘What business have you to come back and revisit earth’—(I beg the reader’s pardon!)—‘_college_, disturbing us in our day and generation?’

Then, at last, well ‘winded’ by my climb, I actually stood once again in front of my own old ‘oak;’ and much I wonder if ever pious Druid stood with deeper feelings of reverence before his own! It was superscribed with a most unusual, though not foreign, name; one which to me at least was new. So far, this was a comfort; for ‘Jones’ would have made me very sad and at ‘Smith’ I feel I should have wept. As it was, I found myself already speculating with some curiosity what manner of man might own to it. Somehow, with perhaps pardonable vanity, I seemed to have expected ‘Ichabod;’ but that was not the present occupant’s name. At the inner door, which was ajar, I knocked, honestly trying not to peep; but the gentleman was not at home. Just then, a jolly young fellow, books under arm, and obviously out from lecture, came bounding up the stairs, two or three steps at a time, in the real old style. Oh, how the aged, nearly worn-out parson envied now the limbs and wind that could perform that once familiar feat! There used to be a _je ne sais quoi_—a sense of freedom, I suppose it was, after being ‘cribbed, cabined, and confined’ for an hour at lecture, that always made one sadly forgetful for the nonce of one’s dignity in that matter of going up-stairs. At other times, the leisurely step which betokened the importance of the (newly fledged) ‘man’ was carefully observed; and used, no doubt, to make due impression upon the freshman—that junior Verdant who always had what Carlyle would call a ‘seeing eye’ for such details of deportment. But coming from lecture, even the old hand, the third-year man, now, as of yore, involuntarily betrays a lingering trace of schoolboy days by a very natural, but most undignified, hop, skip, and jump up-stairs, to doff cap and gown and don flannels for the river.

Well, up he came, this embryo bishop, statesman, or judge—I know not which—and fixing him Ancient Mariner-wise with my eye, I told him my story; feeling rather sheepish until I had satisfactorily accounted for my being discovered hovering about the coal-bin on his landing. More than one kind of expression flitted over the youth’s features as he listened to me; but the predominating one, which his politeness in vain struggled to conceal, was characteristic of the antiquary surveying some newly dug up relic of a past epoch. ‘I am not Mr Ichabod’ (let us suppose the name), he said; ‘but I am his neighbour on this floor; and I’m sure he would wish you to go into your old rooms. I will explain it to him. He will be sorry that he was out when you came.’ With this and a mutual touch of hats, we parted; he to his rooms, and I, after an absence of some forty-five years, to mine. Suggestive enough was the very first object that caught my eye upon entering; for over the bedroom door was placed, by way of ornament, a real skull, with crossbones! There it serenely rested on a black cushion fixed to a small shelf, horribly grinning at me. I could have wished a more pleasant welcome to greet me after my long absence.

‘Eheu! fugaces, Postume, Postume’ (The years fly by, and are lost to me, lost to me), I had said to myself all the morning, as I wandered about the old college haunts of my far-away youth; and if my perception of that sad fact needed quickening, that skull certainly brought it home to me with a vengeance! Clearly, my successor was a bit of a ‘mystic.’ Weird prints on the walls; curious German literature on the shelves and tables; outlandish ornaments everywhere: these and such as these spoke for their absent owner, and I felt that I could conjecture the man by his various kickshaws. I pictured him to myself reading for ‘a class’ by the midnight oil, and occasionally stimulating his flagging interest in the classics by casting a philosophic glance at the skull, to bethink him of the flight of time and man’s ‘little day’ for work. Or, again, I could see him as he refreshed himself on the sofa with a grim legend or two of the Rhine, and meditated upon the fate of some medieval fool wandering about to sell his soul, _si emptorem invenerit_, until he met and did fatal business with the dread merchant of the nether world. At such times, no doubt, his death’s head would have a specially attractive charm for him, and elicit some such sigh as ‘Alas! poor Yorick,’ in reference to the deluded Rhinelander. Two more clues to the character of my young friend were obvious, and right glad I was to obtain them. In the first place, he was not, as are too many of his university generation, so ‘mad,’ through much ‘learning,’ as to deny or ignore his God. Witness a well-worn Bible and Prayer-book; and even an illuminated text opposite his bed—the gift, perhaps, of a pious mother, or handiwork of a pious sister, whose holy influence he did not despise. And, again, he was not one of our unhealthy ascetics of modern society, secular ascetics, I mean—if I may coin such an expression—whose artificial merits are purely negative. Witness his rack of grotesquely shaped and well-cleaned pipes, no less than that three-handled jorum, with the shrivelled peel of the previous evening still therein!

Having taken notice of such apparent trifles on every side, and not liking to trespass longer, I prepared to leave. But if the ‘man’ who occupies my Old Rooms is brought as safely to his journey’s end as I have now well nigh been brought to mine, my last half-minute alone in that ancient ‘upper chamber’ was not spent there in vain.

MY FELLOW-PASSENGER.

IN TWO CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER II.

The next afternoon, I landed at Southampton; and having left my luggage with Raynor’s at the railway station, and exchanged my twenty-five sovereigns for their equivalent in Bank of England notes, I started off to see some relatives living a short way out of the town. After a few pleasant hours at Hambledon Hall, I drove back to Southampton, took an evening train to London, and by half-past nine was comfortably installed in my old quarters, No. 91 Savile Street, W.

In the morning arrived a telegram from Raynor: ‘Heard of a good thing in Dublin. Going there at once. May be a long business. Better countermand my rooms. Will write.’ Here without doubt was an end, at least for the present, of our partnership. Whether Paul intended me to gather that the ‘good thing’ was to involve my presence in Ireland, I knew not; but having already come to a very distinct understanding with him that the _venue_ of any future operations must, as far as I was concerned, be laid in or near London, I was able to decide at once that even the claims of friendship did not demand my expatriation to the other side of the Irish Channel.

London was hot, airless, and uninviting this 21st of July. Two days had elapsed, during which I had heard nothing more from Raynor; and as I loitered down to my club, there came into my mind the recollection of Keymer, a breezy little homestead among the Sussex downs, where lived a middle-aged bachelor cousin of mine, and of his cordial invitation to repeat a visit I had paid him the previous summer. Half an hour later I had posted my letter to Henry Rodd, whose reply by return post was all I could wish: On and after the 24th, he would be delighted to see me for as long as I cared to stay.

On the morning of the 26th, the day upon which I was to leave for Keymer, my landlady presented herself in my sitting-room, and with an expression as of one who has intelligence to convey, opened upon me with: ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, sir, but there was a gentleman called yesterday, askin’ whether we had any one lodgin’ here as was jest back from furrin parts, because he’d got a friend who he thought was goin’ to some lodgin’s in this street, and he couldn’t find him out—not the gentleman, couldn’t, that is, sir. I’m sure he knew you, sir, because he said, when I called you Mr Rodd, “Ah! is that Mr _P._ Rodd?” says he. “Yes,” says I to the gent; “it’s Mr Peter Rodd.” “O yes,” says he, careless-like, “I know Mr Peter Rodd by name.” Then he give me five shillin’s, sir, and told me be sure and not trouble you about his ’avin’ been, seein’ as ’ow you wouldn’t know who he was—he didn’t give no name, sir—but I thought I’d best tell you, sir, because it didn’t seem right-like his givin’ me five shillin’s to say nothin’ about it. Excuse me for mentionin’ it, sir; but it’s what I call ’ush-money, and it’s burnin’ ’oles in my pocket ever since.’

Here the worthy woman paused for breath; and wondering much who this lavish unknown might be, and how he came to know so obscure an individual as myself by name, I, perhaps indiscreetly, asked for a description of his appearance, being then unaware of the curious fact, that people in good Mrs Morton’s station of life are wholly incapable of conveying to a third person the faintest impression of a stranger’s exterior. Thus she could not say whether he was dark or fair, tall or short, young or old, stout or thin. Upon one point only did her memory serve her: ‘His necktie was a speckly, twisted up in a sailorses’ knot.’ Having triumphantly furnished me with this useful clue to the visitor’s identity, Mrs Morton took herself down-stairs.

A sudden thought struck me, and I ran to the window. No; there was not a soul to be seen in the quiet little street save a very ordinary looking person in a gray dustcoat, sunning himself against the pillar-box at the corner some fifty yards away; evidently a groom waiting for orders, I thought. An hour later, I went out to make some purchases, lunched at Blanchard’s, and drove back to Savile Street to prepare for my journey to Sussex. There, in friendly converse with a policeman at the same corner, was Citizen Gray-coat. I looked sharply at him as my cab passed. His tie was _not_ ‘speckly,’ nor had he any outward pretensions to the title of ‘gentleman.’

I reached Keymer without adventure late in the afternoon, my cousin himself driving over in his trap to meet me. Turning round on the platform, after our first hand-shaking, to look for my travelling-bag, I saw stooping in the act of reading the card attached to the handle—_the man in the gray dustcoat_.

It could not be a chance! No; look at it which way I would, there scowled at me the unpleasant but undeniable fact that I was being ‘watched.’ For what purpose, it was of course impossible to tell, though I had no difficulty in connecting the visitor of the day before with the apparition in gray at the little Sussex junction. I waited till the evening to mention the matter to my cousin Henry, who, after a ringing laugh and many small jokes at my expense, suddenly became serious, and remarked: ‘But I say, Peter, it is an excessively disagreeable thing to be followed about in that sort of way. Can’t you account for the mistake in any way, so as to be able to get rid of the fellow to-morrow?’

At that moment the suspicion against which I had fought so hard was borne in with irresistible force upon my mind, and almost dizzy with the physical effort to conceal its effect, I muttered my concurrence with Rodd, that for his sake no less than my own, steps should at once be taken to come to an understanding with the man and relieve him of his duty. Looking forward with interest to learning the nature of the mistake next day, we parted for the night.

That circumstances were so shaping themselves as to do away with the necessity of any action from our side, did not, and could not enter into my calculations, as, bitterly wondering when and how this miserable suspicion would become a sickening certainty, I fell into a dream-haunted and unquiet sleep.

We had breakfasted, and were leaving the house towards eleven o’clock the next morning, intending, if we could sight him, to interview the gray-coated sentry, when a station fly drove up to the door and deposited a well-built and gentlemanly looking person, who, slightly raising his hat, said: ‘May I ask if either of you gentlemen is Mr Peter Rodd?’

Casually noticing that the speaker wore a speckled tie, I replied: ‘That is my name.’

‘Then it is my duty to inform you, sir, that I have a warrant for your arrest on a criminal charge, and at the same time to caution you against saying anything which may hereafter be used in your disfavour.’

‘What is the charge?’ I asked, ‘with the air,’ as Henry afterwards observed, ‘of a man who is in the habit of being arrested every morning after breakfast.’

‘Suspicion of having stolen on or about the 23d June a sum of one thousand five hundred and fifty pounds in gold from the Alliance Bank, Cape Town, in which you were an employee under the name of Percival Royston.’

‘And what evidence have you that this gentleman is the person for whose arrest you have a warrant?’ interposed my cousin.

‘Strictly speaking, I have told you all I am permitted to do,’ was the courteous answer. ‘But it will not be a very grave breach of duty if I say that my prisoner is known to have reached England in the _Balbriggan Castle_, to have exchanged gold for notes at Southampton, and to be in possession of a quantity of luggage marked P. R., some of which has been found upon examination to contain clothes, books, and letters bearing the name Percival Royston, Alliance Bank, Cape Town; while in other boxes were found similar articles with the name Peter Rodd, showing the adoption of the alias.’

‘Would it be within your province to release your prisoner upon undoubted proof that he is not the person wanted?’

The officer thought for a moment, and replied: ‘If such proof could be confirmed by a magistrate—and after communicating with headquarters—_yes_.’

‘Then,’ said my cousin, ‘will you be good enough to bring your prisoner to the manor-house, and ask the squire—who is a magistrate—three simple questions?—The name of your prisoner—How long it is since they last met—What is to his knowledge the total duration of the prisoner’s recent absence from England?’

This my captor readily consented to do; and after the three questions had been answered by the squire—at whose house I had dined just a year before—telegraphed to Scotland Yard, asking whether it was known how long Royston had been continuously in the service of the bank. The answer came speedily: ‘Five or six years;’ followed half an hour later by a second message: ‘A mistake has occurred. Do not arrest Rodd. If already done, express regret, and return at once.’ There was just time for him to catch an up-train; and after carrying out his last instructions with great politeness, the detective drove off, stopping, as I observed, at the end of the drive to pick up a man who was leaning against the gate-post, his hands buried deep in the pockets of a gray dustcoat.

The next post from London brought a very ample explanation and apology for ‘the painful position in which I had been placed through an exceedingly regrettable mistake. This had arisen through the imperfect information furnished to the authorities in the first instance as to the movements of the real culprit, who, they had unfortunately no room whatever to doubt, was the passenger going under the name of Paul Raynor. This person, it was now ascertained, had taken passage on board a sailing-ship for South America. The similarity of initials, with other facts of which I was aware, had combined to mislead those engaged in the case; while the discovery of Royston’s luggage in my possession had of course confirmed their suspicions.

‘They were directed to add that the alias under which I knew him had of course been assumed only after the _Balbriggan Castle_ had actually sailed, as the message brought by the next homeward-bound steamer to Madeira, and thence telegraphed to England, did not contain this important item of information.’