This plan appearing to Ernest to combine the utmost liberality on the part of the vendor with special advantages to the purchaser, who could have abundant time to examine and deliberate about his investment, was promptly acceded to.
He departed at the close of the evening to the hotel, at which place he had decided to stay, notwithstanding the tempting offer of a club bedroom. Ernest Neuchamp was not minded to give up his habits of observation, and for the exercise of his pursuit he deemed the hostelry of the period more favourable than any modern club.
Human nature is so constituted that a project feasible, favourable, and merely needing the very smallest propulsion into action over night wears a changed aspect with the dawn. As Mr. Neuchamp regained his suspended senses in a hot and mosquito-raided upper chamber in the Royal, the idea of becoming at a plunge the proprietor of Gammon Downs showed less alluring than over the joyous claret-illumined board of yester eve. What if the name (given by the rude pioneers, it had been explained to him from some nonsensical circumstance) should be only too correct a designation for a delusive investment? What if Mr. Selmore were a little too obliging, confidential, and considerate for a true and generous vendor? What if his companions, who certainly appreciated the claret, were likely from friendship or interest to be leagued against the stranger? It behoved him to be careful. The slender resources of Neuchampstead had been strained to their utmost to supplement his younger brother’s portion. Were this lost he could never regain his position. And though with the recklessness of a sanguine temperament, he would, without much regret, have addressed himself to the task of carving out a fortune with his own right hand in this land of promise, still he fully recognised the vast difference between a capital even of moderate amount and none at all.
Throwing on a few clothes hastily, he strolled off towards the baths, and after a leisurely swim in the cool translucent wave, he found his appetite for breakfast improved and his mental vision obviously cleared. He arrived at divers and various wise resolutions; and one of them was to call upon Mr. Frankston, the merchant. Two heads are better than one, decided Mr. Neuchamp sapiently, and Granville said that this old gentleman’s head was an exceedingly good one, nearly, but not quite, as good as his heart.
Discovering with some difficulty the precise street, almost a lane, where he had suddenly descried the well-remembered name, he walked into this office about half-past ten o’clock, and inquired for the head of the house. The clerk civilly motioned him to a chair, telling him that Mr. Frankston was engaged, but would not probably be long, as the gentleman with him was Captain Carryall, in an awful hurry to put to sea.
In rather less than five minutes the door opened suddenly, emitting a loud burst of laughter, and a tall sun-tanned man in a frock-coat, whose bold bright eyes were dancing again with fun and covert enjoyment of an apparently very keen jest.
As more than one anxious-looking person had passed into the outer office, Ernest walked in, and found himself in the presence of a stoutish old gentleman, with a high-coloured, clean-shaved countenance, who was chuckling with great relish, and subsiding from an exhausting fit of merriment. His white waistcoat predominated much over his clothing generally, giving that colour, with the aid of a spotless domain of shirt-collar and shirt-front, an unfair advantage over his sad-coloured suit of gray tweed.
‘Good-morning to you, sir,—won’t you take a chair,’ said the old gentleman with much civility. ‘Very rude to be laughing in the face of a visitor. But that Captain Carryall told me the best story I’ve heard for ages. Picked it up at the islands last cruise. Awful fellow! You’d excuse me, I’m sure, if you knew him. How can I be of use to you, my dear sir?’
This last query belonged evidently to another region than the one into which the sea-captain, with his cœur-de-lion face, had allured him. So Ernest produced his card, and a note ‘from their mutual friend, Mr. Granville, he believed.’ The old merchant glanced at the signature, and without another look hurled himself out of his armchair, and seizing Mr. Neuchamp’s hand, wrung it with affectionate earnestness.
‘My dear sir—my dear fellow,’ gasped he; ‘I’d have given a hundred pounds if our friend could have been here, and heard that yarn of Charley Carryall’s. Now, attend to me while I tell you what you’ve got to do. You’ll have enough to amuse yourself till five o’clock, and then you’re to come here with your trunk. The carriage will call punctually at that hour, and you’re to come out with me to my little place, on the South Head Road, and confer upon me the very great obligation of staying with me till you go up the country—if you do go. Now, isn’t that settled?’