CHAPTER IX.
It was nearly ten o’clock on the following morning before Edgar reached the Bedford, Covent Garden. He found the American in his private room waiting his arrival, and clad in a loose dressing-gown, which made him look extra tall and thin—a wonderful garment, embracing every known hue and colour, and strongly resembling, save as to its garishness, a Canadian wood in the fall. Mr Slimm laid aside a disreputable brier he was smoking, as soon as he perceived his visitor. ‘Morning!’ he said briskly. ‘Tolerably punctual. Hope you don’t object to the smell of tobacco so early?’
‘I don’t know,’ Edgar replied, throwing himself down in a chair. ‘Like most well-regulated Britons, I cannot say I am partial to the smell of tobacco before breakfast.’
‘Do you know,’ Mr Slimm responded dryly, ‘I have seen the time when I never smoked before breakfast. I don’t allude to any great outbreak of virtue on my part; but the fact is, when a man can’t get a breakfast, he can’t be accused of smoking before it—no, sir.’ Having administered this crushing piece of logic with characteristic force, Mr Slimm rang the bell and proceeded to order ‘the fixings,’ which was his term for the matutinal repast.
‘You Britishers have got some sound notions on the subject of dinners and promiscuous refreshment; but your imagination don’t soar to breakfast. There’s nothing substantial about it,’ said Mr Slimm, after finishing a pound or so of steak. ‘The Francatelli who rules the kitchen here is fairly good; and I flatter myself if I stay here much longer he will know what a breakfast is. I stayed for a week at a little place off the Strand once; but I was almost starved. Ham and eggs, chops and steaks, was the programme, with a sole, by way of a treat, on Sundays.’
‘Very sad,’ replied Edgar, with considerable gravity. ‘You must have suffered. You don’t seem, however, particularly short here.’
‘Well, no,’ Mr Slimm admitted, at the same time helping himself to fish; ‘I can manage here.’
‘I hope last night’s little scrimmage has not injured your appetite this morning?’ Edgar asked politely.
‘Not much. Æneas Slimm generally can pick up his crumbs tolerably. This little village is a fine place to sharpen the appetite.’
‘How long do you propose to stay here?’
‘I don’t know; it all depends. I am doing London, you see, and when I do a place, I do it well. You’ve got some fine old landmarks here—very fine,’ said Mr Slimm with proverbial American reverence for the antique. ‘I guess we should be proud of the Tower over to New York—yes, sir.’
‘I have never been over it,’ Edgar said carelessly.
‘Do, tell. Man, I guess you’re funning. Seems to me kind o’ incredible for an Englishman to live in London and not see the Tower.’
‘Really, Mr Slimm, I have never seen the Tower.’
‘Wall, if this don’t beat snakes! Never seen the Tower!’ exclaimed the American, chipping his third egg. ‘Maybe you never heard of a picturesque pile known to the inquiring stranger as the British Museum?—Now, have you ever heard of Westminster Abbey?’
‘Well,’ said Edgar laughingly, ‘I believe I have; but I must confess that I have never been inside either of the places you mention.’
‘Wonderful! Mr Seaton, you’re born to make a name. The man who can pass these places without emotion, ain’t no common shake. I guess you’re the kind of matter they make genius out of.’
‘You seem to be astonished. Surely, in New York, you have buildings and churches quite as fine as anything in London?’
‘You think so, do you? Wall, if it’s any consolation to you, keep on thinking so; it won’t hurt any one.—Mr Seaton,’ continued Slimm, lowering his voice reverently, ‘when I get pottering about down at Westminster, and look at the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, strike me if I don’t wish I was a Britisher myself!’
‘That is high praise indeed; and I think it is due to your native patriotism to say your approval does you credit. But candidly, it always struck me that our Houses of Parliament are particularly mean-looking for their position.’
‘Maybe, maybe,’ Mr Slimm replied meditatively; ‘but there’s something about them that makes me feel chockful of poetry. When I wander into the Abbey among these silent stones and listen to that grand organ, I feel it does me good.’
‘You do not look like a man who took any particular delight in music.’
‘I don’t, and that’s a fact. I don’t know F sharp from a bull’s foot; but I can feel it. When the artist presiding at the instrument pulls out that wonderful stop like a human voice, I feel real mean, and that’s a fact—yes, sir.’
‘It is wonderful what an effect music has on the human understanding,’ Edgar replied. ‘“Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.” My wife always says’——
‘Your wife! I didn’t know you were married.’
‘Considering I never told you that interesting fact, I do not see very well how you could know,’ Edgar replied with a smile; which was, however, not so cordially received by Mr Slimm.
‘Um,’ he said doubtfully.—‘Now, look here, my young friend; I’m a rough chap, and I’ve just got to say my mind, if I die for it. Don’t you think a young married man has no business in such a place as we met last night?’
‘But, you see, I had business there,’ Edgar said, still smiling. ‘It was stern business, and nothing else, which took me to that place.’
‘You’ve got the bulge of me, and that’s a fact.’
‘You mean, you don’t understand. Well, I am what is usually known—or rather, in my case, unknown—as a literary man. I am working up a series of articles on gambling-houses.’
‘Why don’t you get on a more respectable line?’
Edgar tapped his pocket and nodded significantly.
‘Hard up,’ said Mr Slimm. ‘Case of needs must when what’s-his-name drives. You don’t look as if you were dragged up to this sort of thing neither?’
‘To be candid with you, I was not,’ Edgar replied, urged by some strange impulse to confide in the American. ‘I am a university man without money. My history is a common one. Educated at a public school, and afterwards at Cambridge, I am expected to get a living in some mysterious way. All my little money was spent upon my education, and then I had to shift for myself. Much good my second-class honours have done me.’
‘Then, to prove your wisdom, you got married?’
‘Of course. But now comes the most remarkable part of my story. My wife was her uncle’s heiress—not that her money was any inducement to me—and I was engaged to her with his approval. It was arranged I was to manage his property, and we were to live with him. Then a relative of his—a lady—came to stay, and everything went wrong from that time. Finally, acting under the lady’s wonderful fascination, my wife’s uncle forbade our marriage, and ordered her to marry a nephew of the lady’s. This, of course, she refused to do, and was consequently disinherited.’
‘What sort of a seraph was the lady?’ asked Mr Slimm, with considerable interest.
‘Don’t mention her, pray. She had the evil-eye, if ever woman had.—But to continue. After our wedding, we came to London, and at different times tried to bring about a reconciliation; but to no effect. Then the old gentleman died.’
‘A common story enough; but considerable rough on you and your wife,’ said Mr Slimm.
‘After that, a most remarkable occurrence happened. When the will was proved, not a sixpence of the old gentleman’s money could be found—that is, excepting the few hundreds in the local bank for household expenses. It is four years ago now, and to this day not one farthing has turned up.’
‘Penny plain, and twopence coloured,’ the American said sententiously—‘to be continued in our next. There’s the making of a sound family romance about this.—Anything more?’
‘A little. An old companion of my wife’s turned up the other day—or I should say my wife found her accidentally in London. She was standing in the rain on Waterloo Bridge, looking into the water.—You comprehend, don’t you?’
‘“One more unfortunate, weary of breath,”’ quoted Mr Slimm with a tender inflection which surprised Edgar. ‘Go on.’
‘It was a wonderful coincidence, if nothing more. It appeared that my wife’s uncle on his dying bed gave her a paper for my wife; and he charged her most solemnly to find her and deliver it, which has been done.’
‘And it was some secret cipher, bet my boots.’
‘On the contrary, it is only a letter—a valedictory letter, containing no clue whatever.’
‘Stranger, you take this matter sort of calm,’ said Slimm solemnly. ‘I should like to see that letter. Mark me; providence has a hand in this, and I want you not to forget it. Such a meeting as that between your wife and her old companion didn’t happen for nothing. Listen, and I’ll tell you what once happened to me in Australia. I shall never forget it. I’m a rich man now, for my wants; but I was poor then; in fact, it was just at the time when fortune had turned. I had, at the time I am speaking of, nearly a thousand ounces of dust buried in my tent. As far as I could tell, not a soul in the camp knew what I had, as I had kept it quiet. Well, one night, I started out to visit an old chum in a neighbouring claim. It was nearly dark when I started, and I had no companion but my dog. I had not gone very far when he began to act in a ridiculous manner, barking and snapping at my horse’s heels, till I thought he was stark mad. Then he turned towards home, stopping every now and then to whine, and finally he struck off home in a bee-line. I rode on, never thinking anything about it till suddenly my horse stumbled and nearly threw me. He had never done such a thing before, and I hadn’t got twenty yards before he did it again. Stranger! I want you to believe I was scared, and I don’t scare easy either. Then I thought of the tales I had read about dogs and their cunning, and, urged by something I can’t understand, I turned back. You’d better believe I’m glad I did. When I got back to my tent, I stole in quietly, and there were three of the biggest scoundrels in the camp digging away exactly over the gold. I didn’t give them much time for meditation, I reckon. It was a tough fight; but I saved my gold. I got this valentine to remember it by; darn their ugly pictures;’ and Mr Slimm bared his huge chest, and displayed a livid gash seamed and lined thereon.
‘And the robbers—what became of them?’
‘Suffocation,’ Slimm replied laconically. ‘The quality of mercy is strained pretty considerable in a mining camp.’
‘And the dog?’
‘Dead!—killed by these scoundrels. I ain’t powerful in the water-cart line; but I don’t mind saying I snivelled then. I can’t think of that faithful insect without a kind of lumpiness in my throat—And now, my friend, don’t you tell me there’s no such thing as fate. You mind if your affair don’t turn out trumps yet.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Edgar replied dubiously. ‘It is all forgotten now, though it was a nine days’ wonder in Somersetshire at the time.’
‘Somersetshire? Now, that’s strange. I’m going to Somersetshire in a few days to see a man I haven’t set eyes on for years. He is a very different man from me—a quiet, scholarly gentleman, a little older than myself. He is a bookish sort of man; and I met him in the mines. We kind of froze to each other; and when we parted, it was understood that whenever I came to England, I was to go and see him. What part of Somersetshire do you hail from?’
‘The name of my wife’s old home is Eastwood.’
‘Eastwood? Tell me quickly, is it possible that your wife’s uncle is Mr Charles Morton?’
‘The same,’ Edgar gasped.—‘What do you know of him?’
‘What do I know of him? Why, he was the man I was going to visit; and he’s dead, poor old fellow! You see, I always liked him, and once I saved his life. It’s a curious thing, but when you do a man a favour, or save his life, or any trifle of that kind, you always get to like him some way. Poor old Morton! Well, if this don’t beat snakes! And your wife is the little Nelly he was always raving about? Dear, dear!’
‘There must be something more than meets the eye here,’ Edgar said, with a little quaver in his voice. ‘Taking all the circumstances into consideration, it looks as if some inscrutable providence has a hand in it.’
‘You bet. I’m not particularly learned, nor no scholar; but I do remember some lines of your immortal poet which tells us “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” The more I think of life, the more it puzzles me, and that’s a fact. To think of you and I—two people in five millions—meeting by such chance! And to think of your wife being the niece of my old friend!’
‘Did he speak much of her to you?’ Edgar asked.
‘A few. “Speak” is no word for it: he raved about her. If ever a man loved a girl, it was your uncle. You must not judge him harshly.’
‘I do not; I never did. That there has been collusion, or something more, I have always been convinced. He was so fond of me till his half-sister came; and as to Nelly, he worshipped her.’
‘He just did, I know. I should like to see that letter.’
‘So you shall; but really, I can see nothing in it.’
‘Try and describe it to me.’
‘That is soon done. It is a commonplace epistle, saying he wished to be remembered as a friend, asking me to forgive him, and hinting that if he had his life to live over again, how different things would be.’
‘That is only a blind, perhaps.—Describe the letter.’
‘It is written on part of a sheet of foolscap; and from the beginning of the first line to the finish, the paper is covered with writing.’
‘No heading or superscription, no signature?’ queried Mr Slimm.
‘No; it is not signed; but is precisely like a letter without heading or signature trimmed close up to the writing with a pair of scissors.’
‘And is it folded, or are there any lines about it?’
‘It is folded like an ordinary note, and there are various horizontal and perpendicular lines upon it. The lines are dotted. Can you make anything of it?’
‘Yes,’ said the American quietly. ‘I can make fortune of it. Show me that letter for five minutes, and I will show you something you would give ten thousand pounds to see.’
And so, arranging for an early meeting, they parted for the day.
Next morning, Eleanor told her husband of a curious dream she had had during the night. She thought she stood on a strange shore, with the sea spread out before her to the utmost horizon. It was sunrise, and coming towards her over the quiet waters, was a great ship—an ‘Argosy with golden sails’—and somehow she thought it brought golden treasure for her. Three times she dreamed the dream, and saw the stately ship. She asked Edgar what he thought of it. He said that dreams went by contraries.
(To be concluded next month.)