"Luke, you take my breath away. Such wonderful things I have never heard. At least, not in our own family."
"Of course, my dear. We all accept wonders with quietude, till they come home to us. Well, when he fetched out this old bottle, it was fungus inside from heel to neck. He held it up against the light, and the glass being whiter than now they make, and the wine gone almost white with age, there you could see this extraordinary growth, like cords in the bottle, and valves across it, and a long yellow sheath like a crocus-flower. I had never seen anything like it before; but he knew all about it. 'Ah, I know a genleman,' he grunted in his throat—he never could say 'gentleman,' as you remember—'a genleman as would give a hundred guineas for this here bottle! Quibbles, he shouldn't have it for a thousand! My boy, you and I will drink it. Say no, and I'll cut off your wife with a half-penny!' Miranda, what could I do but try to humour him to the utmost? If I had had the smallest inkling of the iniquitous will he had made, of course, I never would have sat on the head of the cask, down in his dingy and reeking vaults, by the hour together, to please him. But never mind that—in a moment he took a long-handled knife, or chopper, and holding the bottle upright, struck off the neck and a part of the shoulder, as straight as a line, at the level of the wine. 'Not many men could do that,' he said; 'none of your clumsy cork-screwers for me! Now, Quibbles, here's a real treat for you! Talk of beeswing, my boy, here's a beehive!' And really it was more like eating than drinking wine; for all the body was gone into the fungus. Nastier stuff I never tasted; but, luckily, he took the lion's share. 'Now, Quibbles, I'll tell you a secret,' he said, after swallowing at least a quart; 'a very pretty girl came and kissed me t'other day, in among these very bottles. Such a little duck—not a bit ashamed or afeared of my fungus, as my missus is. And her breath was as sweet as the violets of '20! "Well now, my little dear," thinks I, as I stood back and looked at her, "that was kind of you to kiss an old man a-dying of port wine fungus! And if he only lives another day, you shall have the right to kiss the Royal family, if you cares to do it." Quibbles, I wouldn't call in you, nor any other thief of a lawyer. Lawyers are very well over a glass; but keep 'em outside of the cellar, say I. Very good company, in their way; but the only company I put trust in is the one I have dealt with all my life,—and many a thousand pounds I have paid them—The Royal Wine Company of Oporto. So now, if anything happens to me—though I am not in such a hurry to be binned away, and walled up for the resurrection—Quibbles, wait six months; and then you go to the Royal Oporto Company, and ask for a genleman of the name of Jolly Fellows.'"
"Now, Luke, I am all anxiety to hear," exclaimed Mrs. Sharp, with a sudden interruption, "what was the end of this very strange affair. I perceive now that I have foreseen the whole of it. But it is not right that you should speak so long, without one morsel of refreshment. It is many hours since you dined, my dear, and a very poor dinner you had of it. You shall have a glass of white wine, and a slice of tongue, between a little cold roll and butter. It will not in any way interrupt you. I can get it all for you, without ringing the bell. Only let me ask you one thing first—why have you never told me this till now?"
"Because, Miranda, it would disturb your mind. And I know that you cannot endure suspense. Moreover, I scarcely knew what to think of it. Poor old Fermitage (what with the fungus already in his tubes, and what he was taking down) might be talking sheer nonsense for all that I knew. And indeed, for a long time I treated it so; and I had no stomach for a voyage to Oporto, upon mere speculation, and for the benefit only of some pretty girl. Then I found out, by the purest chance, that no voyage to Oporto was needful, that old 'Port-wine' (who departed on his cask to a better world, the day after his magnum) meant nothing more than the London stores and agency of the Oporto Company. And even after that I made one expedition to the Minories, all for nothing. Two or three very polite young dons stared at me, and thought I was come to chaff them, or perhaps had turned up from their vaults top-heavy, when I asked for 'Senhor Jolly Fellows.' And so I came away, and lost some months, and might never have thought it worth while to go again, except for another mere accident."
"My dear, what a chapter of accidents!" cried Mrs. Sharp, while feeding him. "I thought that you were a great deal too clever to allow any room for accidents."
"Women think so. Men know better," the lawyer replied sententiously; his ability was too well-known to need his vindication. "And, Miranda, you forget that I had as yet no personal interest in the question. But when I happened to have a Portuguese gentleman as a client—a man who had spent many years in England—and happened to be talking of our language to him, I told him one part of the story, and asked if he could throw any light on it. He told me at once that the name which had so puzzled me must be Gelofilos—a Portuguese surname, by no means common. And the next time I was in town, I had occasion to call in St. John's Street, and found myself, almost by accident again, not far from the Company's offices."
"Mr. Sharp, you left such a thing to chance, when you knew that it might pull down that dreadful woman's insolence!"
"My dear, it is not the duty of my life to mitigate feminine arrogance. And to undertake such a crusade, gratis! I am equal to a bold stroke, as you will see, if your patience lasts—but never to such a vast undertaking. When it comes before me, in the way of business, naturally I take it up. But this was no business of my own; and the will was proved, and assets called in; for the old rogue did not owe one penny. Well, I went again, and this time I got hold of the right man—— Miranda, I hear the bell!"
The new office-bell, the successor to the one that succumbed to Russel Overshute, rang as hard as ring it could. A special messenger was come from London, and in half an hour Mr. Luke Sharp was sitting on the box of the night up mail.