VC - A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea Part 3

'Why, sir,' said Polson, turning with outspread hands of appeal, 'it comes to nothing. It happened a week or two ago that I found a hulking fellow with a digger's beard and a red s.h.i.+rt--one of those chaps we've seen lately back from Ballarat and Geelong--skulking about outside the gate. I asked him what he wanted, and he was drunk and abusive, and--well, I had to give him a hiding.'

'Yes,' said the General, 'you had to give him a hiding. Why?'

'I've told you, sir,' Polson stammered. 'The fellow was drunk, and--when I ordered him away, he got so beastly cheeky that I had to go for him.'

'Before this happened,' said the General, somewhat drawling on the words, 'you exchanged cards and confidences?' Polson stretched out his hands again in appeal, and the General, looking at him with a countenance impa.s.sive as the Sphinx, felt a pang of pity in his heart, for the lad was a good lad, and the old warrior knew it, and he had been near to loving him, this past half-dozen years. And the boy was not merely pale with the suffering of his mind, but his very eyes had lost their colour, as a man's eyes do when he has received a shot in battle.

The General knew that look, and had seen it in the eyes of dying comrades. It touched him nearly, but he gave no sign. 'Why did the man tell you his name, and that he came from Melbourne?'

'He said,' Polson returned, desperately, 'that he wanted to see Mr.

Jervase, and that he meant to see him. He said my father would wish anybody in h.e.l.l who tried to hide him. That's all, sir.'

'And you, Jervase,' said the General, 'never heard of this man?'

'Never in my life,' Jervase answered bluntly. 'The world's gone mad, I fancy. Everybody's making a fuss about a thing that'll be forgotten in a week's time. Why didn't you,' he continued, turning sternly upon Polson, 'why didn't you tell me about this?'

'A man can't make a s.h.i.+ndy about it every time he has a turn-up with a tramp,' Polson answered. 'I didn't think it worth while to talk about it.'

'Polson,' said the General, 'I've known you since you were no higher than my knee, and I've never had a shadow of a reason to doubt your word. I don't want you to turn informer and I shan't ask you another question. You had better leave your father and myself to talk this out together.'

'No, sir,' said Polson, 'there's trouble in the house, and I'm going to stay here, unless I get my father's orders to go away.'

Now John Jervase was undoubtedly a good deal of a rogue, but no man is all of a piece, and he had one or two good characteristics. Amongst them was a true and deep affection for his only son, and if at the beginning of his career he had had any such hope of honour and credit as his son had bidden fair to bring him as he neared the close of it, he would have made a better man. Polson's quietly expressed resolve pinched him a little inwardly, and he gave the boy a glance of grat.i.tude.

'I don't say go, lad--I say stay. I've honoured and respected General Boswell since we first came to be neighbours, twenty years ago; and now I should have a very poor eye indeed if I couldn't see that he's on the way to lose his respect for me, if events don't change his mind. But if there's anything to be browt against Jack Jervase, let Jack Jervase's lad stand by and hear it, and see how his father takes the ackisation.'

'Very well, Jervase,' said the General. 'We will have it so. I have an interest in this affair, and I must tell you plainly that your manner is so very strange that I feel scarcely comfortable under it. You are a business man, and you must not object to my using business terms. Very nearly the whole of my fortune is invested in your hands. If your credit is seriously shaken, and, above all, if it is shaken by such a charge as is now being brought against the firm, my daughter and I are on the verge of ruin. It wouldn't greatly matter about an old campaigner like myself, for I am not yet so far broken that I can't still run in harness. But I have my little girl to think of, and for her sake I am going to do my duty, as a business man, however unpleasant it may be to me to do it.'

'The scandal can't touch you, sir.' The General smiled sternly.

'It can't touch me in one way, but it may break my fortune. Now answer me this one question. What is the worth of the brine which has been pumped up from our workings since the firm of Jervase & Jervoyce began to prosper in that enterprise?'

'I can tell you that, sir, roughly, in the turn of a hand. First and last, two hundred thousand pounds. That may be a thousand wrong on one side or the other--it may even be five thousand wrong on the one side or the other--but I'll guarantee that it's not more than that.'

'So that if this claim, whether by fair means or by foul, could be established, the firm could be made responsible in a Civil Court for that sum.'

'Exactly, sir. The case being established, the firm would be responsible for every penny.'

'And for how large a share,' the General asked, 'am I personally responsible?'

'Each member of the firm,' Jervase answered, 'is responsible in his own person for the whole amount. There's no limitation of liability.'

The conversation was marked by less excitement than it had been on the one side, and by a more business-like manner on the other.

'You needn't fear, sir,' said Jervase. 'James and I are good to meet the whole of the obligations, and, apart from that, these fellows who are being brought up against us are the very sc.u.m of the earth. I don't suppose that any Court of Law would listen to them.'

'No?' asked the General, with sudden keenness. 'And why are they the very sc.u.m of the earth? You don't know the men?'

Jervase was visibly disconcerted. He stammered as he answered:

'Why, what else but the sc.u.m of the earth can they be, to have trumped up a lying case like this?'

''Mph!' said the General. 'Be that as it may, as a partner in this concern, I may conceivably be made liable for two hundred thousand pounds?'

'That's the law, sir.'

'That being so, I must take this business into my own hands. Until I am legally advised to a contrary action I shall take no step without informing you of it. But the thing is too serious to be neglected, and I have little liking for your way of meeting it, Jervase, though I like your cousin's less.'

After this declaration, there was silence for the s.p.a.ce of a full minute, and then James came back, his slight figure absurdly costumed in his cousin's clothes, which were too long for him in the arm, too short in the leg, and too full everywhere.

'Your cousin and I, Mr. Jervoyce,' said the General, 'have arrived at a partial understanding, and I must make the position clear as between you and myself. When did you first hear of this accusation?'

'To-day,' said James. 'Never a word until to-day.'

'When did you hear of this man Light-foot, late of Melbourne, and now in England?' James cast a piteously beseeching eye towards Jervase, and the General held out a hand towards the latter as if to interdict the speaking of a word. He repeated his question. 'When did you first hear of the man Lightfoot, late of Melbourne? Now, come, sir,' the General cried, in a voice of command, 'you are here to answer that question on your own responsibility. You don't choose to answer? Now, the story is that these men have been blackmailing you. a.s.suming that story to be true, they have been paid, and it is evident that there must be some means of discovering the channel through which payments have been made.

Are you prepared to submit to an examination of your books?'

'I am,' said John Jervase, 'willingly, at any moment.'

'You!' cried James.

'And not you?' said the General. 'Well, that simplifies matters.'

The wretched James had all but surrendered himself to fate a quarter of an hour before, and now, seeing that he had betrayed himself, he cast the case up altogether, and, throwing both arms upon the table, fell on his knees beside it, dropped his face upon his hands, and began to whimper.

'Wait a bit, sir,' cried John Jervase. 'Now just wait one minute and I'll put the case before you. Here are the facts. I should be obliged if you would take a seat, sir, and allow me to do the same.' He moved a chair towards the table with great deliberation, sat down leisurely, reached out for the decanter, filled his gla.s.s, emptied it and set it down--all with a certain look of weighty purpose. 'I'm going to make a clean breast of it, sir. I should leave James to do it if he was capable of doing anything but whimper like a kicked charity boy. It's a bit to my discredit to speak the plain truth, because I've got to admit that I have certainly made an effort to deceive you. That isn't creditable, and it goes again the grain to admit it. I said I didn't know this fellow Lightfoot. That was a lie. I know him well. I told the lie to shelter James.'

James lifted a bes...o...b..red face, stared at the speaker for a single instant, and then allowed his head to fall upon his hands again.

'I did it to shelter James,' Jervase repeated, and as he spoke he dealt his cousin a sharp kick beneath the table, as if to bespeak that worthy gentleman's particular attention. 'James, to tell the truth about him, since it must be told, has always had two sides to him. He was a solid chapel-goer till he was thirty, and he was a deacon or an elder, or something of that sort; but he always had some little game on on the sly, and he always succeeded in keeping his Piccadillies pretty quiet.

When he began to make money, he went over to the Church and took the plate round at collecting time, and got to be a sidesman, and a trustee, and I don't know what all. He never married, but he's never been without a quiet little home of his own, with a lady at the head of the table--have ye, James?'

James groaned, but made no verbal answer.

'Now this loafer of a Lightfoot had a sister, and in respect of her, there's no doubt about it that something discreditable might have been laid to James. For once in his life, he acted like a fool, and he wrote the girl a pile of letters. This fellow Lightfoot got hold of 'em, and he's made James pay through the nose ever since. Now the girl's dead, and the thing's so old, James has refused to keep this lazy beggar in his idleness and his dissipations any longer. The fellow's tried to frighten him with the letters, and, failing in that, he's worked up this lie against the firm, has got two more blackguards to swear to it, seemingly, and there's the whole truth about the matter. I suppose they've got up some sort of a case, or Stubbs wouldn't be looking at it.

But we shall blow it all to smithereens when we get them in the witness box. Now, that's the whole of the matter. Speak for yourself, James--make a clean breast of it. Isn't that the truth? I haven't exaggerated your iniquities, and you may just as well own up to 'em.'

He kicked his cousin a second time again by way of warning, and James looked up for a second time, and being fortified by the expression of his cousin's face, he spoke.

'It's horribly humiliating to have those things said,' he gasped. 'But that is the truth about the whole transaction, General. G.o.d forgive me--it's many years ago. But that's the miserable truth.'

'I think,' said the General, rising from the seat he had taken at his host's invitation, 'that it is time for me to go home.'

'You can't do that, sir,' cried Polson. 'It's impossible. The weather is worse than ever. Think of Irene going out in such a storm as this! You were weatherbound here hours ago, and listen to it now. No carriage could live on the hillside to-night.'

'That is probably true,' said the General with great dryness. 'And since I am forced to intrude myself upon your hospitalities, I will ask you, Polson, to be good enough to show me to my room.'

He walked from the apartment without further speech, Polson following him; and when the sound of footsteps in the pa.s.sage had died, John Jervase rose and closed the door.

'Well, James,' he said with a grating laugh, 'that c.o.c.k didn't fight anyhow.'