St. Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England

CHAPTER XVI – THE HOME-COMING OF MR. ROWLEY’S VISCOUNT

By eight the next morning Dudgeon and I had made our parting. By that time we had grown to be extremely familiar; and I would very willingly have kept him by me, and even carried him to Amersham Place. But it appeared he was due at the public-house where we had met, on some affairs of my great-uncle the Count, who had an outlying estate in that part of the shire. If Dudgeon had had his way the night before, I should have been arrested on my uncle’s land and by my uncle’s agent, a culmination of ill-luck.

A little after noon I started, in a hired chaise, by way of Dunstable. The mere mention of the name Amersham Place made every one supple and smiling. It was plainly a great house, and my uncle lived there in style. The fame of it rose as we approached, like a chain of mountains; at Bedford they touched their caps, but in Dunstable they crawled upon their bellies. I thought the landlady would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, such smiles, such affectionate attentions were called forth, and the good lady bustled on my service in such a pother of ringlets and with such a jingling of keys. ‘You’re probably expected, sir, at the Place? I do trust you may ’ave better accounts of his lordship’s ’elth, sir. We understood that his lordship, Mosha de Carwell, was main bad. Ha, sir, we shall all feel his loss, poor, dear, noble gentleman; and I’m sure nobody more polite! They do say, sir, his wealth is enormous, and before the Revolution, quite a prince in his own country! But I beg your pardon, sir; ’ow I do run on, to be sure; and doubtless all beknown to you already! For you do resemble the family, sir. I should have known you anywheres by the likeness to the dear viscount. Ha, poor gentleman, he must ’ave a ’eavy ’eart these days.’

In the same place I saw out of the inn-windows a man-servant passing in the livery of my house, which you are to think I had never before seen worn, or not that I could remember. I had often enough, indeed, pictured myself advanced to be a Marshal, a Duke of the Empire, a Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, and some other kickshaws of the kind, with a perfect rout of flunkeys correctly dressed in my own colours. But it is one thing to imagine, and another to see; it would be one thing to have these liveries in a house of my own in Paris – it was quite another to find them flaunting in the heart of hostile England; and I fear I should have made a fool of myself, if the man had not been on the other side of the street, and I at a one-pane window. There was something illusory in this transplantation of the wealth and honours of a family, a thing by its nature so deeply rooted in the soil; something ghostly in this sense of home-coming so far from home.

From Dunstable I rolled away into a crescendo of similar impressions. There are certainly few things to be compared with these castles, or rather country seats, of the English nobility and gentry; nor anything at all to equal the servility of the population that dwells in their neighbourhood. Though I was but driving in a hired chaise, word of my destination seemed to have gone abroad, and the women curtseyed and the men louted to me by the wayside. As I came near, I began to appreciate the roots of this widespread respect. The look of my uncle’s park wall, even from the outside, had something of a princely character; and when I came in view of the house itself, a sort of madness of vicarious vain-glory struck me dumb and kept me staring. It was about the size of the Tuileries. It faced due north; and the last rays of the sun, that was setting like a red-hot shot amidst a tumultuous gathering of snow clouds, were reflected on the endless rows of windows. A portico of Doric columns adorned the front, and would have done honour to a temple. The servant who received me at the door was civil to a fault – I had almost said, to offence; and the hall to which he admitted me through a pair of glass doors was warmed and already partly lighted by a liberal chimney heaped with the roots of beeches.

‘Vicomte Anne de St. Yves,’ said I, in answer to the man’s question; whereupon he bowed before me lower still, and stepping upon one side introduced me to the truly awful presence of the major-domo. I have seen many dignitaries in my time, but none who quite equalled this eminent being; who was good enough to answer to the unassuming name of Dawson. From him I learned that my uncle was extremely low, a doctor in close attendance, Mr. Romaine expected at any moment, and that my cousin, the Vicomte de St. Yves, had been sent for the same morning.

‘It was a sudden seizure, then?’ I asked.

Well, he would scarcely go as far as that. It was a decline, a fading away, sir; but he was certainly took bad the day before, had sent for Mr. Romaine, and the major-domo had taken it on himself a little later to send word to the Viscount. ‘It seemed to me, my lord,’ said he, ‘as if this was a time when all the fambly should be called together.’

I approved him with my lips, but not in my heart. Dawson was plainly in the interests of my cousin.

‘And when can I expect to see my great-uncle, the Count?’ said I.

In the evening, I was told; in the meantime he would show me to my room, which had been long prepared for me, and I should be expected to dine in about an hour with the doctor, if my lordship had no objections.

My lordship had not the faintest.

‘At the same time,’ I said, ‘I have had an accident: I have unhappily lost my baggage, and am here in what I stand in. I don’t know if the doctor be a formalist, but it is quite impossible I should appear at table as I ought.’

He begged me to be under no anxiety. ‘We have been long expecting you,’ said he. ‘All is ready.’

Such I found to be the truth. A great room had been prepared for me; through the mullioned windows the last flicker of the winter sunset interchanged with the reverberation of a royal fire; the bed was open, a suit of evening clothes was airing before the blaze, and from the far corner a boy came forward with deprecatory smiles. The dream in which I had been moving seemed to have reached its pitch. I might have quitted this house and room only the night before; it was my own place that I had come to; and for the first time in my life I understood the force of the words home and welcome.

‘This will be all as you would want, sir?’ said Mr. Dawson. ‘This ’ere boy, Rowley, we place entirely at your disposition. ’E’s not exactly a trained vallet, but Mossho Powl, the Viscount’s gentleman, ’ave give him the benefick of a few lessons, and it is ’oped that he may give sitisfection. Hanythink that you may require, if you will be so good as to mention the same to Rowley, I will make it my business myself, sir, to see you sitisfied.’

So saying, the eminent and already detested Mr. Dawson took his departure, and I was left alone with Rowley. A man who may be said to have wakened to consciousness in the prison of the Abbaye, among those ever graceful and ever tragic figures of the brave and fair, awaiting the hour of the guillotine and denuded of every comfort, I had never known the luxuries or the amenities of my rank in life. To be attended on by servants I had only been accustomed to in inns. My toilet had long been military, to a moment, at the note of a bugle, too often at a ditch-side. And it need not be wondered at if I looked on my new valet with a certain diffidence. But I remembered that if he was my first experience of a valet, I was his first trial as a master. Cheered by which consideration, I demanded my bath in a style of good assurance. There was a bathroom contiguous; in an incredibly short space of time the hot water was ready; and soon after, arrayed in a shawl dressing-gown, and in a luxury of contentment and comfort, I was reclined in an easy-chair before the mirror, while Rowley, with a mixture of pride and anxiety which I could well understand, laid out his razors.

‘Hey, Rowley?’ I asked, not quite resigned to go under fire with such an inexperienced commander. ‘It’s all right, is it? You feel pretty sure of your weapons?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ he replied. ‘It’s all right, I assure your lordship.’

‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Rowley, ‘but for the sake of shortness, would you mind not belording me in private?’ said I. ‘It will do very well if you call me Mr. Anne. It is the way of my country, as I dare say you know.’

Mr. Rowley looked blank.

‘But you’re just as much a Viscount as Mr. Powl’s, are you not?’ he said.

‘As Mr. Powl’s Viscount?’ said I, laughing. ‘Oh, keep your mind easy, Mr. Rowley’s is every bit as good. Only, you see, as I am of the younger line, I bear my Christian name along with the title. Alain is the Viscount; I am the Viscount Anne. And in giving me the name of Mr. Anne, I assure you you will be quite regular.’

‘Yes, Mr. Anne,’ said the docile youth. ‘But about the shaving, sir, you need be under no alarm. Mr. Powl says I ’ave excellent dispositions.’

‘Mr. Powl?’ said I. ‘That doesn’t seem to me very like a French name.’

‘No, sir, indeed, my lord,’ said he, with a burst of confidence. ‘No, indeed, Mr. Anne, and it do not surely. I should say now, it was more like Mr. Pole.’

‘And Mr. Powl is the Viscount’s man?’

‘Yes, Mr. Anne,’ said he. ‘He ’ave a hard billet, he do. The Viscount is a very particular gentleman. I don’t think as you’ll be, Mr. Anne?’ he added, with a confidential smile in the mirror.

He was about sixteen, well set up, with a pleasant, merry, freckled face, and a pair of dancing eyes. There was an air at once deprecatory and insinuating about the rascal that I thought I recognised. There came to me from my own boyhood memories of certain passionate admirations long passed away, and the objects of them long ago discredited or dead. I remembered how anxious I had been to serve those fleeting heroes, how readily I told myself I would have died for them, how much greater and handsomer than life they had appeared. And looking in the mirror, it seemed to me that I read the face of Rowley, like an echo or a ghost, by the light of my own youth. I have always contended (somewhat against the opinion of my friends) that I am first of all an economist; and the last thing that I would care to throw away is that very valuable piece of property – a boy’s hero-worship.

‘Why,’ said I, ‘you shave like an angel, Mr. Rowley!’

‘Thank you, my lord,’ says he. ‘Mr. Powl had no fear of me. You may be sure, sir, I should never ’ave had this berth if I ’adn’t ’ave been up to Dick. We been expecting of you this month back. My eye! I never see such preparations. Every day the fires has been kep’ up, the bed made, and all! As soon as it was known you were coming, sir, I got the appointment; and I’ve been up and down since then like a Jack-in-the-box. A wheel couldn’t sound in the avenue but what I was at the window! I’ve had a many disappointments; but to-night, as soon as you stepped out of the shay, I knew it was my – it was you. Oh, you had been expected! Why, when I go down to supper, I’ll be the ’ero of the servants’ ’all: the ’ole of the staff is that curious!’

‘Well,’ said I, ‘I hope you may be able to give a fair account of me – sober, steady, industrious, good-tempered, and with a first-rate character from my last place?’

He laughed an embarrassed laugh. ‘Your hair curls beautiful,’ he said, by way of changing the subject. ‘The Viscount’s the boy for curls, though; and the richness of it is, Mr. Powl tells me his don’t curl no more than that much twine – by nature. Gettin’ old, the Viscount is. He ’ave gone the pace, ’aven’t ’e, sir?’

‘The fact is,’ said I, ‘that I know very little about him. Our family has been much divided, and I have been a soldier from a child.’

‘A soldier, Mr. Anne, sir?’ cried Rowley, with a sudden feverish animation. ‘Was you ever wounded?’

It is contrary to my principles to discourage admiration for myself; and, slipping back the shoulder of the dressing-gown, I silently exhibited the scar which I had received in Edinburgh Castle. He looked at it with awe.

‘Ah, well!’ he continued, ‘there’s where the difference comes in! It’s in the training. The other Viscount have been horse-racing, and dicing, and carrying on all his life. All right enough, no doubt; but what I do say is, that it don’t lead to nothink. Whereas – ’

‘Whereas Mr. Rowley’s?’ I put in.

‘My Viscount?’ said he. ‘Well, sir, I did say it; and now that I’ve seen you, I say it again!’

I could not refrain from smiling at this outburst, and the rascal caught me in the mirror and smiled to me again.

‘I’d say it again, Mr. Hanne,’ he said. ‘I know which side my bread’s buttered. I know when a gen’leman’s a gen’leman. Mr. Powl can go to Putney with his one! Beg your pardon, Mr. Anne, for being so familiar,’ said he, blushing suddenly scarlet. ‘I was especially warned against it by Mr. Powl.’

‘Discipline before all,’ said I. ‘Follow your front-rank man.

With that, we began to turn our attention to the clothes. I was amazed to find them fit so well: not à la diable, in the haphazard manner of a soldier’s uniform or a ready-made suit; but with nicety, as a trained artist might rejoice to make them for a favourite subject.

‘’Tis extraordinary,’ cried I: ‘these things fit me perfectly.’

‘Indeed, Mr. Anne, you two be very much of a shape,’ said Rowley.

‘Who? What two?’ said I.

‘The Viscount,’ he said.

‘Damnation! Have I the man’s clothes on me, too?’ cried I.

But Rowley hastened to reassure me. On the first word of my coming, the Count had put the matter of my wardrobe in the hands of his own and my cousin’s tailors; and on the rumour of our resemblance, my clothes had been made to Alain’s measure.

‘But they were all made for you express, Mr. Anne. You may be certain the Count would never do nothing by ’alf: fires kep’ burning; the finest of clothes ordered, I’m sure, and a body-servant being trained a-purpose.’

‘Well,’ said I, ‘it’s a good fire, and a good set-out of clothes; and what a valet, Mr. Rowley! And there’s one thing to be said for my cousin – I mean for Mr. Powl’s Viscount – he has a very fair figure.’

‘Oh, don’t you be took in, Mr. Anne,’ quoth the faithless Rowley: ‘he has to be hyked into a pair of stays to get them things on!’

‘Come, come, Mr. Rowley,’ said I, ‘this is telling tales out of school! Do not you be deceived. The greatest men of antiquity, including Caesar and Hannibal and Pope Joan, may have been very glad, at my time of life or Alain’s, to follow his example. ’Tis a misfortune common to all; and really,’ said I, bowing to myself before the mirror like one who should dance the minuet, ‘when the result is so successful as this, who would do anything but applaud?’

My toilet concluded, I marched on to fresh surprises. My chamber, my new valet and my new clothes had been beyond hope: the dinner, the soup, the whole bill of fare was a revelation of the powers there are in man. I had not supposed it lay in the genius of any cook to create, out of common beef and mutton, things so different and dainty. The wine was of a piece, the doctor a most agreeable companion; nor could I help reflecting on the prospect that all this wealth, comfort and handsome profusion might still very possibly become mine. Here were a change indeed, from the common soldier and the camp kettle, the prisoner and his prison rations, the fugitive and the horrors of the covered cart!

CHAPTER XVII – THE DESPATCH-BOX

The doctor had scarce finished his meal before he hastened with an apology to attend upon his patient; and almost immediately after I was myself summoned and ushered up the great staircase and along interminable corridors to the bedside of my great-uncle the Count. You are to think that up to the present moment I had not set eyes on this formidable personage, only on the evidences of his wealth and kindness. You are to think besides that I had heard him miscalled and abused from my earliest childhood up. The first of the émigrés could never expect a good word in the society in which my father moved. Even yet the reports I received were of a doubtful nature; even Romaine had drawn of him no very amiable portrait; and as I was ushered into the room, it was a critical eye that I cast on my great-uncle. He lay propped on pillows in a little cot no greater than a camp-bed, not visibly breathing. He was about eighty years of age, and looked it; not that his face was much lined, but all the blood and colour seemed to have faded from his body, and even his eyes, which last he kept usually closed as though the light distressed him. There was an unspeakable degree of slyness in his expression, which kept me ill at ease; he seemed to lie there with his arms folded, like a spider waiting for prey. His speech was very deliberate and courteous, but scarce louder than a sigh.

‘I bid you welcome, Monsieur le Vicomte Anne,’ said he, looking at me hard with his pale eyes, but not moving on his pillows. ‘I have sent for you, and I thank you for the obliging expedition you have shown. It is my misfortune that I cannot rise to receive you. I trust you have been reasonably well entertained?’

‘Monsieur mon oncle,’ I said, bowing very low, ‘I am come at the summons of the head of my family.’

‘It is well,’ he said. ‘Be seated. I should be glad to hear some news – if that can be called news that is already twenty years old – of how I have the pleasure to see you here.’

By the coldness of his address, not more than by the nature of the times that he bade me recall, I was plunged in melancholy. I felt myself surrounded as with deserts of friendlessness, and the delight of my welcome was turned to ashes in my mouth.

‘That is soon told, monseigneur,’ said I. ‘I understand that I need tell you nothing of the end of my unhappy parents? It is only the story of the lost dog.’

‘You are right. I am sufficiently informed of that deplorable affair; it is painful to me. My nephew, your father, was a man who would not be advised,’ said he. ‘Tell me, if you please, simply of yourself.’

‘I am afraid I must run the risk of harrowing your sensibility in the beginning,’ said I, with a bitter smile, ‘because my story begins at the foot of the guillotine. When the list came out that night, and her name was there, I was already old enough, not in years but in sad experience, to understand the extent of my misfortune. She – ’ I paused. ‘Enough that she arranged with a friend, Madame de Chasserades, that she should take charge of me, and by the favour of our jailers I was suffered to remain in the shelter of the Abbaye. That was my only refuge; there was no corner of France that I could rest the sole of my foot upon except the prison. Monsieur le Comte, you are as well aware as I can be what kind of a life that was, and how swiftly death smote in that society. I did not wait long before the name of Madame de Chasserades succeeded to that of my mother on the list. She passed me on to Madame de Noytot; she, in her turn, to Mademoiselle de Braye; and there were others. I was the one thing permanent; they were all transient as clouds; a day or two of their care, and then came the last farewell and – somewhere far off in that roaring Paris that surrounded us – the bloody scene. I was the cherished one, the last comfort, of these dying women. I have been in pitched fights, my lord, and I never knew such courage. It was all done smiling, in the tone of good society; belle maman was the name I was taught to give to each; and for a day or two the new “pretty mamma” would make much of me, show me off, teach me the minuet, and to say my prayers; and then, with a tender embrace, would go the way of her predecessors, smiling. There were some that wept too. There was a childhood! All the time Monsieur de Culemberg kept his eye on me, and would have had me out of the Abbaye and in his own protection, but my “pretty mammas” one after another resisted the idea. Where could I be safer? they argued; and what was to become of them without the darling of the prison? Well, it was soon shown how safe I was! The dreadful day of the massacre came; the prison was overrun; none paid attention to me, not even the last of my “pretty mammas,” for she had met another fate. I was wandering distracted, when I was found by some one in the interests of Monsieur de Culemberg. I understand he was sent on purpose; I believe, in order to reach the interior of the prison, he had set his hand to nameless barbarities: such was the price paid for my worthless, whimpering little life! He gave me his hand; it was wet, and mine was reddened; he led me unresisting. I remember but the one circumstance of my flight – it was my last view of my last pretty mamma. Shall I describe it to you?’ I asked the Count, with a sudden fierceness.

‘Avoid unpleasant details,’ observed my great-uncle gently.

At these words a sudden peace fell upon me. I had been angry with the man before; I had not sought to spare him; and now, in a moment, I saw that there was nothing to spare. Whether from natural heartlessness or extreme old age, the soul was not at home; and my benefactor, who had kept the fire lit in my room for a month past – my only relative except Alain, whom I knew already to be a hired spy – had trodden out the last sparks of hope and interest.

‘Certainly,’ said I; ‘and, indeed, the day for them is nearly over. I was taken to Monsieur de Culemberg’s, – I presume, sir, that you know the Abbe de Culemberg?’

He indicated assent without opening his eyes.

‘He was a very brave and a very learned man – ’

‘And a very holy one,’ said my uncle civilly.

‘And a very holy one, as you observe,’ I continued. ‘He did an infinity of good, and through all the Terror kept himself from the guillotine. He brought me up, and gave me such education as I have. It was in his house in the country at Dammarie, near Melun, that I made the acquaintance of your agent, Mr. Vicary, who lay there in hiding, only to fall a victim at the last to a gang of chauffeurs.’

‘That poor Mr. Vicary!’ observed my uncle. ‘He had been many times in my interests to France, and this was his first failure. Quel charmant homme, n’est-ce pas?’

‘Infinitely so,’ said I. ‘But I would not willingly detain you any further with a story, the details of which it must naturally be more or less unpleasant for you to hear. Suffice it that, by M. de Culemberg’s own advice, I said farewell at eighteen to that kind preceptor and his books, and entered the service of France; and have since then carried arms in such a manner as not to disgrace my family.’

‘You narrate well; vous aves la voix chaude,’ said my uncle, turning on his pillows as if to study me. ‘I have a very good account of you by Monsieur de Mauseant, whom you helped in Spain. And you had some education from the Abbe de Culemberg, a man of a good house? Yes, you will do very well. You have a good manner and a handsome person, which hurts nothing. We are all handsome in the family; even I myself, I have had my successes, the memories of which still charm me. It is my intention, my nephew, to make of you my heir. I am not very well content with my other nephew, Monsieur le Vicomte: he has not been respectful, which is the flattery due to age. And there are other matters.’

I was half tempted to throw back in his face that inheritance so coldly offered. At the same time I had to consider that he was an old man, and, after all, my relation; and that I was a poor one, in considerable straits, with a hope at heart which that inheritance might yet enable me to realise. Nor could I forget that, however icy his manners, he had behaved to me from the first with the extreme of liberality and – I was about to write, kindness, but the word, in that connection, would not come. I really owed the man some measure of gratitude, which it would be an ill manner to repay if I were to insult him on his deathbed.

‘Your will, monsieur, must ever be my rule,’ said I, bowing.

‘You have wit, monsieur mon neveu,’ said he, ‘the best wit – the wit of silence. Many might have deafened me with their gratitude. Gratitude!’ he repeated, with a peculiar intonation, and lay and smiled to himself. ‘But to approach what is more important. As a prisoner of war, will it be possible for you to be served heir to English estates? I have no idea: long as I have dwelt in England, I have never studied what they call their laws. On the other hand, how if Romaine should come too late? I have two pieces of business to be transacted – to die, and to make my will; and, however desirous I may be to serve you, I cannot postpone the first in favour of the second beyond a very few hours.’

‘Well, sir, I must then contrive to be doing as I did before,’ said I.

‘Not so,’ said the Count. ‘I have an alternative. I have just drawn my balance at my banker’s, a considerable sum, and I am now to place it in your hands. It will be so much for you and so much less – ’ he paused, and smiled with an air of malignity that surprised me. ‘But it is necessary it should be done before witnesses. Monsieur le Vicomte is of a particular disposition, and an unwitnessed donation may very easily be twisted into a theft.’

He touched a bell, which was answered by a man having the appearance of a confidential valet. To him he gave a key.

‘Bring me the despatch-box that came yesterday, La Ferriere,’ said he. ‘You will at the same time present my compliments to Dr. Hunter and M. l’Abbe, and request them to step for a few moments to my room.’

The despatch-box proved to be rather a bulky piece of baggage, covered with Russia leather. Before the doctor and an excellent old smiling priest it was passed over into my hands with a very clear statement of the disposer’s wishes; immediately after which, though the witnesses remained behind to draw up and sign a joint note of the transaction, Monsieur de Kéroual dismissed me to my own room, La Ferriere following with the invaluable box.

At my chamber door I took it from him with thanks, and entered alone. Everything had been already disposed for the night, the curtains drawn and the fire trimmed; and Rowley was still busy with my bedclothes. He turned round as I entered with a look of welcome that did my heart good. Indeed, I had never a much greater need of human sympathy, however trivial, than at that moment when I held a fortune in my arms. In my uncle’s room I had breathed the very atmosphere of disenchantment. He had gorged my pockets; he had starved every dignified or affectionate sentiment of a man. I had received so chilling an impression of age and experience that the mere look of youth drew me to confide in Rowley: he was only a boy, his heart must beat yet, he must still retain some innocence and natural feelings, he could blurt out follies with his mouth, he was not a machine to utter perfect speech! At the same time, I was beginning to outgrow the painful impressions of my interview; my spirits were beginning to revive; and at the jolly, empty looks of Mr. Rowley, as he ran forward to relieve me of the box, St. Ives became himself again.

‘Now, Rowley, don’t be in a hurry,’ said I. ‘This is a momentous juncture. Man and boy, you have been in my service about three hours. You must already have observed that I am a gentleman of a somewhat morose disposition, and there is nothing that I more dislike than the smallest appearance of familiarity. Mr. Pole or Mr. Powl, probably in the spirit of prophecy, warned you against this danger.’

‘Yes, Mr. Anne,’ said Rowley blankly.

‘Now there has just arisen one of those rare cases, in which I am willing to depart from my principles. My uncle has given me a box – what you would call a Christmas box. I don’t know what’s in it, and no more do you: perhaps I am an April fool, or perhaps I am already enormously wealthy; there might be five hundred pounds in this apparently harmless receptacle!’

‘Lord, Mr. Anne!’ cried Rowley.

‘Now, Rowley, hold up your right hand and repeat the words of the oath after me,’ said I, laying the despatch-box on the table. ‘Strike me blue if I ever disclose to Mr. Powl, or Mr. Powl’s Viscount, or anything that is Mr. Powl’s, not to mention Mr. Dawson and the doctor, the treasures of the following despatch-box; and strike me sky-blue scarlet if I do not continually maintain, uphold, love, honour and obey, serve, and follow to the four corners of the earth and the waters that are under the earth, the hereinafter before-mentioned (only that I find I have neglected to mention him) Viscount Anne de Kéroual de St. – Yves, commonly known as Mr. Rowley’s Viscount. So be it. Amen.’

He took the oath with the same exaggerated seriousness as I gave it to him.

‘Now,’ said I. ‘Here is the key for you; I will hold the lid with both hands in the meanwhile.’ He turned the key. ‘Bring up all the candles in the room, and range them along-side. What is it to be? A live gorgon, a Jack-in-the-box, or a spring that fires a pistol? On your knees, sir, before the prodigy!’

So saying, I turned the despatch-box upside down upon the table. At sight of the heap of bank paper and gold that lay in front of us, between the candles, or rolled upon the floor alongside, I stood astonished.

‘O Lord!’ cried Mr. Rowley; ‘oh Lordy, Lordy, Lord!’ and he scrambled after the fallen guineas. ‘O my, Mr. Anne! what a sight o’ money! Why, it’s like a blessed story-book. It’s like the Forty Thieves.’

‘Now Rowley, let’s be cool, let’s be businesslike,’ said I. ‘Riches are deceitful, particularly when you haven’t counted them; and the first thing we have to do is to arrive at the amount of my – let me say, modest competency. If I’m not mistaken, I have enough here to keep you in gold buttons all the rest of your life. You collect the gold, and I’ll take the paper.’

Accordingly, down we sat together on the hearthrug, and for some time there was no sound but the creasing of bills and the jingling of guineas, broken occasionally by the exulting exclamations of Rowley. The arithmetical operation on which we were embarked took long, and it might have been tedious to others; not to me nor to my helper.