THE WRONG BOX

By Robert Louis Stevenson And Lloyd Osbourne




PREFACE

'Nothing like a little judicious levity,' says Michael Finsbury in the
text: nor can any better excuse be found for the volume in the reader's
hand. The authors can but add that one of them is old enough to be
ashamed of himself, and the other young enough to learn better.

R. L. S. L. O.




CHAPTER I. In Which Morris Suspects

How very little does the amateur, dwelling at home at ease, comprehend
the labours and perils of the author, and, when he smilingly skims the
surface of a work of fiction, how little does he consider the hours
of toil, consultation of authorities, researches in the Bodleian,
correspondence with learned and illegible Germans--in one word, the vast
scaffolding that was first built up and then knocked down, to while away
an hour for him in a railway train! Thus I might begin this tale with
a biography of Tonti--birthplace, parentage, genius probably inherited
from his mother, remarkable instance of precocity, etc--and a complete
treatise on the system to which he bequeathed his name. The material
is all beside me in a pigeon-hole, but I scorn to appear vainglorious.
Tonti is dead, and I never saw anyone who even pretended to regret him;
and, as for the tontine system, a word will suffice for all the purposes
of this unvarnished narrative.

A number of sprightly youths (the more the merrier) put up a certain sum
of money, which is then funded in a pool under trustees; coming on for
a century later, the proceeds are fluttered for a moment in the face of
the last survivor, who is probably deaf, so that he cannot even hear of
his success--and who is certainly dying, so that he might just as well
have lost. The peculiar poetry and even humour of the scheme is now
apparent, since it is one by which nobody concerned can possibly profit;
but its fine, sportsmanlike character endeared it to our grandparents.

When Joseph Finsbury and his brother Masterman were little lads
in white-frilled trousers, their father--a well-to-do merchant
in Cheapside--caused them to join a small but rich tontine of
seven-and-thirty lives. A thousand pounds was the entrance fee; and
Joseph Finsbury can remember to this day the visit to the lawyer's,
where the members of the tontine--all children like himself--were
assembled together, and sat in turn in the big office chair, and signed
their names with the assistance of a kind old gentleman in spectacles
and Wellington boots. He remembers playing with the children afterwards
on the lawn at the back of the lawyer's house, and a battle-royal that
he had with a brother tontiner who had kicked his shins. The sound of
war called forth the lawyer from where he was dispensing cake and
wine to the assembled parents in the office, and the combatants were
separated, and Joseph's spirit (for he was the smaller of the two)
commended by the gentleman in the Wellington boots, who vowed he had
been just such another at the same age. Joseph wondered to himself if
he had worn at that time little Wellingtons and a little bald head,
and when, in bed at night, he grew tired of telling himself stories
of sea-fights, he used to dress himself up as the old gentleman, and
entertain other little boys and girls with cake and wine.

In the year 1840 the thirty-seven were all alive; in 1850 their number
had decreased by six; in 1856 and 1857 business was more lively, for the
Crimea and the Mutiny carried off no less than nine. There remained
in 1870 but five of the original members, and at the date of my story,
including the two Finsburys, but three.

By this time Masterman was in his seventy-third year; he had long
complained of the effects of age, had long since retired from business,
and now lived in absolute seclusion under the roof of his son Michael,
the well-known solicitor. Joseph, on the other hand, was still up and
about, and still presented but a semi-venerable figure on the streets
in which he loved to wander. This was the more to be deplored because
Masterman had led (even to the least particular) a model British life.
Industry, regularity, respectability, and a preference for the four per
cents are understood to be the very foundations of a green old age. All
these Masterman had eminently displayed, and here he was, ab agendo, at
seventy-three; while Joseph, barely two years younger, and in the most
excellent preservation, had disgraced himself through life by idleness
and eccentricity. Embarked in the leather trade, he had early wearied
of business, for which he was supposed to have small parts. A taste for
general information, not promptly checked, had soon begun to sap his
manhood. There is no passion more debilitating to the mind, unless,
perhaps, it be that itch of public speaking which it not infrequently
accompanies or begets. The two were conjoined in the case of Joseph; the
acute stage of this double malady, that in which the patient delivers
gratuitous lectures, soon declared itself with severity, and not many
years had passed over his head before he would have travelled thirty
miles to address an infant school. He was no student; his reading was
confined to elementary textbooks and the daily papers; he did not even
fly as high as cyclopedias; life, he would say, was his volume. His
lectures were not meant, he would declare, for college professors; they
were addressed direct to 'the great heart of the people', and the
heart of the people must certainly be sounder than its head, for his
lucubrations were received with favour. That entitled 'How to Live
Cheerfully on Forty Pounds a Year', created a sensation among the
unemployed. 'Education: Its Aims, Objects, Purposes, and Desirability',
gained him the respect of the shallow-minded. As for his celebrated
essay on 'Life Insurance Regarded in its Relation to the Masses', read
before the Working Men's Mutual Improvement Society, Isle of Dogs, it
was received with a 'literal ovation' by an unintelligent audience of
both sexes, and so marked was the effect that he was next year elected
honorary president of the institution, an office of less than
no emolument--since the holder was expected to come down with a
donation--but one which highly satisfied his self-esteem.

While Joseph was thus building himself up a reputation among the more
cultivated portion of the ignorant, his domestic life was suddenly
overwhelmed by orphans. The death of his younger brother Jacob saddled
him with the charge of two boys, Morris and John; and in the course of
the same year his family was still further swelled by the addition of a
little girl, the daughter of John Henry Hazeltine, Esq., a gentleman
of small property and fewer friends. He had met Joseph only once, at a
lecture-hall in Holloway; but from that formative experience he returned
home to make a new will, and consign his daughter and her fortune to the
lecturer. Joseph had a kindly disposition; and yet it was not without
reluctance that he accepted this new responsibility, advertised for a
nurse, and purchased a second-hand perambulator. Morris and John he made
more readily welcome; not so much because of the tie of consanguinity
as because the leather business (in which he hastened to invest their
fortune of thirty thousand pounds) had recently exhibited inexplicable
symptoms of decline. A young but capable Scot was chosen as manager to
the enterprise, and the cares of business never again afflicted Joseph
Finsbury. Leaving his charges in the hands of the capable Scot (who was
married), he began his extensive travels on the Continent and in Asia
Minor.

With a polyglot Testament in one hand and a phrase-book in the other,
he groped his way among the speakers of eleven European languages.
The first of these guides is hardly applicable to the purposes of the
philosophic traveller, and even the second is designed more expressly
for the tourist than for the expert in life. But he pressed interpreters
into his service--whenever he could get their services for nothing--and
by one means and another filled many notebooks with the results of his
researches.

In these wanderings he spent several years, and only returned to England
when the increasing age of his charges needed his attention. The two
lads had been placed in a good but economical school, where they had
received a sound commercial education; which was somewhat awkward, as
the leather business was by no means in a state to court enquiry. In
fact, when Joseph went over his accounts preparatory to surrendering his
trust, he was dismayed to discover that his brother's fortune had not
increased by his stewardship; even by making over to his two wards
every penny he had in the world, there would still be a deficit of seven
thousand eight hundred pounds. When these facts were communicated to the
two brothers in the presence of a lawyer, Morris Finsbury threatened
his uncle with all the terrors of the law, and was only prevented from
taking extreme steps by the advice of the professional man. 'You cannot
get blood from a stone,' observed the lawyer.

And Morris saw the point and came to terms with his uncle. On the one
side, Joseph gave up all that he possessed, and assigned to his
nephew his contingent interest in the tontine, already quite a hopeful
speculation. On the other, Morris agreed to harbour his uncle and Miss
Hazeltine (who had come to grief with the rest), and to pay to each
of them one pound a month as pocket-money. The allowance was amply
sufficient for the old man; it scarce appears how Miss Hazeltine
contrived to dress upon it; but she did, and, what is more, she never
complained. She was, indeed, sincerely attached to her incompetent
guardian. He had never been unkind; his age spoke for him loudly; there
was something appealing in his whole-souled quest of knowledge and
innocent delight in the smallest mark of admiration; and, though the
lawyer had warned her she was being sacrificed, Julia had refused to add
to the perplexities of Uncle Joseph.

In a large, dreary house in John Street, Bloomsbury, these four dwelt
together; a family in appearance, in reality a financial association.
Julia and Uncle Joseph were, of course, slaves; John, a gentle man with
a taste for the banjo, the music-hall, the Gaiety bar, and the sporting
papers, must have been anywhere a secondary figure; and the cares
and delights of empire devolved entirely upon Morris. That these are
inextricably intermixed is one of the commonplaces with which the bland
essayist consoles the incompetent and the obscure, but in the case of
Morris the bitter must have largely outweighed the sweet. He grudged no
trouble to himself, he spared none to others; he called the servants
in the morning, he served out the stores with his own hand, he took
soundings of the sherry, he numbered the remainder biscuits; painful
scenes took place over the weekly bills, and the cook was frequently
impeached, and the tradespeople came and hectored with him in the back
parlour upon a question of three farthings. The superficial might have
deemed him a miser; in his own eyes he was simply a man who had been
defrauded; the world owed him seven thousand eight hundred pounds, and
he intended that the world should pay.

But it was in his dealings with Joseph that Morris's character
particularly shone. His uncle was a rather gambling stock in which he
had invested heavily; and he spared no pains in nursing the security.
The old man was seen monthly by a physician, whether he was well or ill.
His diet, his raiment, his occasional outings, now to Brighton, now to
Bournemouth, were doled out to him like pap to infants. In bad weather
he must keep the house. In good weather, by half-past nine, he must
be ready in the hall; Morris would see that he had gloves and that his
shoes were sound; and the pair would start for the leather business
arm in arm. The way there was probably dreary enough, for there was no
pretence of friendly feeling; Morris had never ceased to upbraid
his guardian with his defalcation and to lament the burthen of Miss
Hazeltine; and Joseph, though he was a mild enough soul, regarded his
nephew with something very near akin to hatred. But the way there
was nothing to the journey back; for the mere sight of the place of
business, as well as every detail of its transactions, was enough to
poison life for any Finsbury.

Joseph's name was still over the door; it was he who still signed the
cheques; but this was only policy on the part of Morris, and designed
to discourage other members of the tontine. In reality the business was
entirely his; and he found it an inheritance of sorrows. He tried to
sell it, and the offers he received were quite derisory. He tried to
extend it, and it was only the liabilities he succeeded in extending; to
restrict it, and it was only the profits he managed to restrict. Nobody
had ever made money out of that concern except the capable Scot, who
retired (after his discharge) to the neighbourhood of Banff and built a
castle with his profits. The memory of this fallacious Caledonian Morris
would revile daily, as he sat in the private office opening his mail,
with old Joseph at another table, sullenly awaiting orders, or savagely
affixing signatures to he knew not what. And when the man of the heather
pushed cynicism so far as to send him the announcement of his second
marriage (to Davida, eldest daughter of the Revd. Alexander McCraw), it
was really supposed that Morris would have had a fit.

Business hours, in the Finsbury leather trade, had been cut to the
quick; even Morris's strong sense of duty to himself was not strong
enough to dally within those walls and under the shadow of that
bankruptcy; and presently the manager and the clerks would draw a long
breath, and compose themselves for another day of procrastination. Raw
Haste, on the authority of my Lord Tennyson, is half-sister to Delay;
but the Business Habits are certainly her uncles. Meanwhile, the leather
merchant would lead his living investment back to John Street like a
puppy dog; and, having there immured him in the hall, would depart for
the day on the quest of seal rings, the only passion of his life. Joseph
had more than the vanity of man, he had that of lecturers. He owned he
was in fault, although more sinned against (by the capable Scot) than
sinning; but had he steeped his hands in gore, he would still not
deserve to be thus dragged at the chariot-wheels of a young man, to sit
a captive in the halls of his own leather business, to be entertained
with mortifying comments on his whole career--to have his costume
examined, his collar pulled up, the presence of his mittens verified,
and to be taken out and brought home in custody, like an infant with
a nurse. At the thought of it his soul would swell with venom, and he
would make haste to hang up his hat and coat and the detested mittens,
and slink upstairs to Julia and his notebooks. The drawing-room at least
was sacred from Morris; it belonged to the old man and the young girl;
it was there that she made her dresses; it was there that he inked
his spectacles over the registration of disconnected facts and the
calculation of insignificant statistics.

Here he would sometimes lament his connection with the tontine. 'If it
were not for that,' he cried one afternoon, 'he would not care to keep
me. I might be a free man, Julia. And I could so easily support myself
by giving lectures.'

'To be sure you could,' said she; 'and I think it one of the meanest
things he ever did to deprive you of that amusement. There were those
nice people at the Isle of Cats (wasn't it?) who wrote and asked you so
very kindly to give them an address. I did think he might have let you
go to the Isle of Cats.'

'He is a man of no intelligence,' cried Joseph. 'He lives here literally
surrounded by the absorbing spectacle of life, and for all the good
it does him, he might just as well be in his coffin. Think of his
opportunities! The heart of any other young man would burn within him
at the chance. The amount of information that I have it in my power
to convey, if he would only listen, is a thing that beggars language,
Julia.'

'Whatever you do, my dear, you mustn't excite yourself,' said Julia;
'for you know, if you look at all ill, the doctor will be sent for.'

'That is very true,' returned the old man humbly, 'I will compose myself
with a little study.' He thumbed his gallery of notebooks. 'I wonder,'
he said, 'I wonder (since I see your hands are occupied) whether it
might not interest you--'

'Why, of course it would,' cried Julia. 'Read me one of your nice
stories, there's a dear.'

He had the volume down and his spectacles upon his nose instanter, as
though to forestall some possible retractation. 'What I propose to read
to you,' said he, skimming through the pages, 'is the notes of a highly
important conversation with a Dutch courier of the name of David Abbas,
which is the Latin for abbot. Its results are well worth the money
it cost me, for, as Abbas at first appeared somewhat impatient, I was
induced to (what is, I believe, singularly called) stand him drink. It
runs only to about five-and-twenty pages. Yes, here it is.' He cleared
his throat, and began to read.

Mr Finsbury (according to his own report) contributed about four hundred
and ninety-nine five-hundredths of the interview, and elicited from
Abbas literally nothing. It was dull for Julia, who did not require to
listen; for the Dutch courier, who had to answer, it must have been
a perfect nightmare. It would seem as if he had consoled himself by
frequent appliances to the bottle; it would even seem that (toward the
end) he had ceased to depend on Joseph's frugal generosity and called
for the flagon on his own account. The effect, at least, of some
mellowing influence was visible in the record: Abbas became suddenly a
willing witness; he began to volunteer disclosures; and Julia had just
looked up from her seam with something like a smile, when Morris burst
into the house, eagerly calling for his uncle, and the next instant
plunged into the room, waving in the air the evening paper.

It was indeed with great news that he came charged. The demise was
announced of Lieutenant-General Sir Glasgow Biggar, KCSI, KCMG, etc.,
and the prize of the tontine now lay between the Finsbury brothers. Here
was Morris's opportunity at last. The brothers had never, it is true,
been cordial. When word came that Joseph was in Asia Minor, Masterman
had expressed himself with irritation. 'I call it simply indecent,' he
had said. 'Mark my words--we shall hear of him next at the North Pole.'
And these bitter expressions had been reported to the traveller on his
return. What was worse, Masterman had refused to attend the lecture on
'Education: Its Aims, Objects, Purposes, and Desirability', although
invited to the platform. Since then the brothers had not met. On the
other hand, they never had openly quarrelled; Joseph (by Morris's
orders) was prepared to waive the advantage of his juniority; Masterman
had enjoyed all through life the reputation of a man neither greedy nor
unfair. Here, then, were all the elements of compromise assembled;
and Morris, suddenly beholding his seven thousand eight hundred pounds
restored to him, and himself dismissed from the vicissitudes of the
leather trade, hastened the next morning to the office of his cousin
Michael.

Michael was something of a public character. Launched upon the law at a
very early age, and quite without protectors, he had become a trafficker
in shady affairs. He was known to be the man for a lost cause; it was
known he could extract testimony from a stone, and interest from a
gold-mine; and his office was besieged in consequence by all that
numerous class of persons who have still some reputation to lose, and
find themselves upon the point of losing it; by those who have
made undesirable acquaintances, who have mislaid a compromising
correspondence, or who are blackmailed by their own butlers. In
private life Michael was a man of pleasure; but it was thought his dire
experience at the office had gone far to sober him, and it was known
that (in the matter of investments) he preferred the solid to the
brilliant. What was yet more to the purpose, he had been all his life a
consistent scoffer at the Finsbury tontine.

It was therefore with little fear for the result that Morris presented
himself before his cousin, and proceeded feverishly to set forth his
scheme. For near upon a quarter of an hour the lawyer suffered him to
dwell upon its manifest advantages uninterrupted. Then Michael rose from
his seat, and, ringing for his clerk, uttered a single clause: 'It won't
do, Morris.'

It was in vain that the leather merchant pleaded and reasoned, and
returned day after day to plead and reason. It was in vain that he
offered a bonus of one thousand, of two thousand, of three thousand
pounds; in vain that he offered, in Joseph's name, to be content with
only one-third of the pool. Still there came the same answer: 'It won't
do.'

'I can't see the bottom of this,' he said at last. 'You answer none of
my arguments; you haven't a word to say. For my part, I believe it's
malice.'

The lawyer smiled at him benignly. 'You may believe one thing,' said he.
'Whatever else I do, I am not going to gratify any of your curiosity.
You see I am a trifle more communicative today, because this is our last
interview upon the subject.'

'Our last interview!' cried Morris.

'The stirrup-cup, dear boy,' returned Michael. 'I can't have my business
hours encroached upon. And, by the by, have you no business of your own?
Are there no convulsions in the leather trade?'

'I believe it to be malice,' repeated Morris doggedly. 'You always hated
and despised me from a boy.'

'No, no--not hated,' returned Michael soothingly. 'I rather like you
than otherwise; there's such a permanent surprise about you, you look so
dark and attractive from a distance. Do you know that to the naked
eye you look romantic?--like what they call a man with a history? And
indeed, from all that I can hear, the history of the leather trade is
full of incident.'

'Yes,' said Morris, disregarding these remarks, 'it's no use coming
here. I shall see your father.'

'O no, you won't,' said Michael. 'Nobody shall see my father.'

'I should like to know why,' cried his cousin.

'I never make any secret of that,' replied the lawyer. 'He is too ill.'

'If he is as ill as you say,' cried the other, 'the more reason for
accepting my proposal. I will see him.'

'Will you?' said Michael, and he rose and rang for his clerk.

It was now time, according to Sir Faraday Bond, the medical baronet
whose name is so familiar at the foot of bulletins, that Joseph (the
poor Golden Goose) should be removed into the purer air of Bournemouth;
and for that uncharted wilderness of villas the family now shook off
the dust of Bloomsbury; Julia delighted, because at Bournemouth she
sometimes made acquaintances; John in despair, for he was a man of city
tastes; Joseph indifferent where he was, so long as there was pen and
ink and daily papers, and he could avoid martyrdom at the office; Morris
himself, perhaps, not displeased to pretermit these visits to the city,
and have a quiet time for thought. He was prepared for any sacrifice;
all he desired was to get his money again and clear his feet of leather;
and it would be strange, since he was so modest in his desires, and the
pool amounted to upward of a hundred and sixteen thousand pounds--it
would be strange indeed if he could find no way of influencing Michael.
'If I could only guess his reason,' he repeated to himself; and by day,
as he walked in Branksome Woods, and by night, as he turned upon his
bed, and at meal-times, when he forgot to eat, and in the bathing
machine, when he forgot to dress himself, that problem was constantly
before him: Why had Michael refused?

At last, one night, he burst into his brother's room and woke him.

'What's all this?' asked John.

'Julia leaves this place tomorrow,' replied Morris. 'She must go up to
town and get the house ready, and find servants. We shall all follow in
three days.'

'Oh, brayvo!' cried John. 'But why?'

'I've found it out, John,' returned his brother gently.

'It? What?' enquired John.

'Why Michael won't compromise,' said Morris. 'It's because he can't.
It's because Masterman's dead, and he's keeping it dark.'

'Golly!' cried the impressionable John. 'But what's the use? Why does he
do it, anyway?'

'To defraud us of the tontine,' said his brother.

'He couldn't; you have to have a doctor's certificate,' objected John.

'Did you never hear of venal doctors?' enquired Morris. 'They're as
common as blackberries: you can pick 'em up for three-pound-ten a head.'

'I wouldn't do it under fifty if I were a sawbones,' ejaculated John.

'And then Michael,' continued Morris, 'is in the very thick of it. All
his clients have come to grief; his whole business is rotten eggs. If
any man could arrange it, he could; and depend upon it, he has his plan
all straight; and depend upon it, it's a good one, for he's clever, and
be damned to him! But I'm clever too; and I'm desperate. I lost seven
thousand eight hundred pounds when I was an orphan at school.'

'O, don't be tedious,' interrupted John. 'You've lost far more already
trying to get it back.'



CHAPTER II. In Which Morris takes Action

Some days later, accordingly, the three males of this depressing family
might have been observed (by a reader of G. P. R. James) taking their
departure from the East Station of Bournemouth. The weather was raw
and changeable, and Joseph was arrayed in consequence according to the
principles of Sir Faraday Bond, a man no less strict (as is well known)
on costume than on diet. There are few polite invalids who have not
lived, or tried to live, by that punctilious physician's orders. 'Avoid
tea, madam,' the reader has doubtless heard him say, 'avoid tea, fried
liver, antimonial wine, and bakers' bread. Retire nightly at 10.45;
and clothe yourself (if you please) throughout in hygienic flannel.
Externally, the fur of the marten is indicated. Do not forget to
procure a pair of health boots at Messrs Dail and Crumbie's.' And he has
probably called you back, even after you have paid your fee, to add
with stentorian emphasis: 'I had forgotten one caution: avoid kippered
sturgeon as you would the very devil.' The unfortunate Joseph was cut to
the pattern of Sir Faraday in every button; he was shod with the health
boot; his suit was of genuine ventilating cloth; his shirt of hygienic
flannel, a somewhat dingy fabric; and he was draped to the knees in
the inevitable greatcoat of marten's fur. The very railway porters at
Bournemouth (which was a favourite station of the doctor's) marked the
old gentleman for a creature of Sir Faraday. There was but one evidence
of personal taste, a vizarded forage cap; from this form of headpiece,
since he had fled from a dying jackal on the plains of Ephesus, and
weathered a bora in the Adriatic, nothing could divorce our traveller.

The three Finsburys mounted into their compartment, and fell immediately
to quarrelling, a step unseemly in itself and (in this case) highly
unfortunate for Morris. Had he lingered a moment longer by the window,
this tale need never have been written. For he might then have observed
(as the porters did not fail to do) the arrival of a second passenger in
the uniform of Sir Faraday Bond. But he had other matters on hand, which
he judged (God knows how erroneously) to be more important.

'I never heard of such a thing,' he cried, resuming a discussion which
had scarcely ceased all morning. 'The bill is not yours; it is mine.'

'It is payable to me,' returned the old gentleman, with an air of bitter
obstinacy. 'I will do what I please with my own property.'

The bill was one for eight hundred pounds, which had been given him at
breakfast to endorse, and which he had simply pocketed.

'Hear him, Johnny!' cried Morris. 'His property! the very clothes upon
his back belong to me.'

'Let him alone,' said John. 'I am sick of both of you.'

'That is no way to speak of your uncle, sir,' cried Joseph. 'I will not
endure this disrespect. You are a pair of exceedingly forward, impudent,
and ignorant young men, and I have quite made up my mind to put an end
to the whole business.'.

'O skittles!' said the graceful John.

But Morris was not so easy in his mind. This unusual act of
insubordination had already troubled him; and these mutinous words now
sounded ominously in his ears. He looked at the old gentleman uneasily.
Upon one occasion, many years before, when Joseph was delivering a
lecture, the audience had revolted in a body; finding their entertainer
somewhat dry, they had taken the question of amusement into their own
hands; and the lecturer (along with the board schoolmaster, the Baptist
clergyman, and a working-man's candidate, who made up his bodyguard) was
ultimately driven from the scene. Morris had not been present on that
fatal day; if he had, he would have recognized a certain fighting
glitter in his uncle's eye, and a certain chewing movement of his lips,
as old acquaintances. But even to the inexpert these symptoms breathed
of something dangerous.

'Well, well,' said Morris. 'I have no wish to bother you further till we
get to London.'

Joseph did not so much as look at him in answer; with tremulous hands
he produced a copy of the British Mechanic, and ostentatiously buried
himself in its perusal.

'I wonder what can make him so cantankerous?' reflected the nephew. 'I
don't like the look of it at all.' And he dubiously scratched his nose.

The train travelled forth into the world, bearing along with it the
customary freight of obliterated voyagers, and along with these old
Joseph, affecting immersion in his paper, and John slumbering over
the columns of the Pink Un, and Morris revolving in his mind a dozen
grudges, and suspicions, and alarms. It passed Christchurch by the sea,
Herne with its pinewoods, Ringwood on its mazy river. A little behind
time, but not much for the South-Western, it drew up at the platform of
a station, in the midst of the New Forest, the real name of which (in
case the railway company 'might have the law of me') I shall veil under
the alias of Browndean.

Many passengers put their heads to the window, and among the rest an old
gentleman on whom I willingly dwell, for I am nearly done with him now,
and (in the whole course of the present narrative) I am not in the least
likely to meet another character so decent. His name is immaterial, not
so his habits. He had passed his life wandering in a tweed suit on the
continent of Europe; and years of Galignani's Messenger having at length
undermined his eyesight, he suddenly remembered the rivers of Assyria
and came to London to consult an oculist. From the oculist to the
dentist, and from both to the physician, the step appears inevitable;
presently he was in the hands of Sir Faraday, robed in ventilating cloth
and sent to Bournemouth; and to that domineering baronet (who was his
only friend upon his native soil) he was now returning to report. The
case of these tweedsuited wanderers is unique. We have all seen them
entering the table d'hote (at Spezzia, or Grdtz, or Venice) with a
genteel melancholy and a faint appearance of having been to India and
not succeeded. In the offices of many hundred hotels they are known by
name; and yet, if the whole of this wandering cohort were to disappear
tomorrow, their absence would be wholly unremarked. How much more, if
only one--say this one in the ventilating cloth--should vanish! He had
paid his bills at Bournemouth; his worldly effects were all in the van
in two portmanteaux, and these after the proper interval would be
sold as unclaimed baggage to a Jew; Sir Faraday's butler would be a
half-crown poorer at the year's end, and the hotelkeepers of Europe
about the same date would be mourning a small but quite observable
decline in profits. And that would be literally all. Perhaps the old
gentleman thought something of the sort, for he looked melancholy enough
as he pulled his bare, grey head back into the carriage, and the train
smoked under the bridge, and forth, with ever quickening speed, across
the mingled heaths and woods of the New Forest.

Not many hundred yards beyond Browndean, however, a sudden jarring of
brakes set everybody's teeth on edge, and there was a brutal stoppage.
Morris Finsbury was aware of a confused uproar of voices, and sprang to
the window. Women were screaming, men were tumbling from the windows on
the track, the guard was crying to them to stay where they were; at the
same time the train began to gather way and move very slowly backward
toward Browndean; and the next moment--, all these various sounds were
blotted out in the apocalyptic whistle and the thundering onslaught of
the down express.

The actual collision Morris did not hear. Perhaps he fainted. He had a
wild dream of having seen the carriage double up and fall to pieces
like a pantomime trick; and sure enough, when he came to himself, he was
lying on the bare earth and under the open sky. His head ached savagely;
he carried his hand to his brow, and was not surprised to see it red
with blood. The air was filled with an intolerable, throbbing roar,
which he expected to find die away with the return of consciousness; and
instead of that it seemed but to swell the louder and to pierce the more
cruelly through his ears. It was a raging, bellowing thunder, like a
boiler-riveting factory.

And now curiosity began to stir, and he sat up and looked about him. The
track at this point ran in a sharp curve about a wooded hillock; all
of the near side was heaped with the wreckage of the Bournemouth train;
that of the express was mostly hidden by the trees; and just at the
turn, under clouds of vomiting steam and piled about with cairns of
living coal, lay what remained of the two engines, one upon the other.
On the heathy margin of the line were many people running to and fro,
and crying aloud as they ran, and many others lying motionless like
sleeping tramps.

Morris suddenly drew an inference. 'There has been an accident' thought
he, and was elated at his perspicacity. Almost at the same time his eye
lighted on John, who lay close by as white as paper. 'Poor old John!
poor old cove!' he thought, the schoolboy expression popping forth from
some forgotten treasury, and he took his brother's hand in his with
childish tenderness. It was perhaps the touch that recalled him;
at least John opened his eyes, sat suddenly up, and after several
ineffectual movements of his lips, 'What's the row?' said he, in a
phantom voice.

The din of that devil's smithy still thundered in their ears. 'Let us
get away from that,' Morris cried, and pointed to the vomit of steam
that still spouted from the broken engines. And the pair helped each
other up, and stood and quaked and wavered and stared about them at the
scene of death.

Just then they were approached by a party of men who had already
organized themselves for the purposes of rescue.

'Are you hurt?' cried one of these, a young fellow with the sweat
streaming down his pallid face, and who, by the way he was treated, was
evidently the doctor.

Morris shook his head, and the young man, nodding grimly, handed him a
bottle of some spirit.

'Take a drink of that,' he said; 'your friend looks as if he needed it
badly. We want every man we can get,' he added; 'there's terrible work
before us, and nobody should shirk. If you can do no more, you can carry
a stretcher.'

The doctor was hardly gone before Morris, under the spur of the dram,
awoke to the full possession of his wits.

'My God!' he cried. 'Uncle Joseph!'

'Yes,' said John, 'where can he be? He can't be far off. I hope the old
party isn't damaged.'

'Come and help me to look,' said Morris, with a snap of savage
determination strangely foreign to his ordinary bearing; and then, for
one moment, he broke forth. 'If he's dead!' he cried, and shook his fist
at heaven.

To and fro the brothers hurried, staring in the faces of the wounded,
or turning the dead upon their backs. They must have thus examined forty
people, and still there was no word of Uncle Joseph. But now the course
of their search brought them near the centre of the collision, where the
boilers were still blowing off steam with a deafening clamour. It was
a part of the field not yet gleaned by the rescuing party. The ground,
especially on the margin of the wood, was full of inequalities--here
a pit, there a hillock surmounted with a bush of furze. It was a place
where many bodies might lie concealed, and they beat it like pointers
after game. Suddenly Morris, who was leading, paused and reached forth
his index with a tragic gesture. John followed the direction of his
brother's hand.

In the bottom of a sandy hole lay something that had once been human.
The face had suffered severely, and it was unrecognizable; but that was
not required. The snowy hair, the coat of marten, the ventilating cloth,
the hygienic flannel--everything down to the health boots from Messrs
Dail and Crumbie's, identified the body as that of Uncle Joseph. Only
the forage cap must have been lost in the convulsion, for the dead man
was bareheaded.

'The poor old beggar!' said John, with a touch of natural feeling; 'I
would give ten pounds if we hadn't chivvied him in the train!'

But there was no sentiment in the face of Morris as he gazed upon the
dead. Gnawing his nails, with introverted eyes, his brow marked with
the stamp of tragic indignation and tragic intellectual effort, he stood
there silent. Here was a last injustice; he had been robbed while he was
an orphan at school, he had been lashed to a decadent leather business,
he had been saddled with Miss Hazeltine, his cousin had been defrauding
him of the tontine, and he had borne all this, we might almost say, with
dignity, and now they had gone and killed his uncle!

'Here!' he said suddenly, 'take his heels, we must get him into the
woods. I'm not going to have anybody find this.'

'O, fudge!' said John, 'where's the use?'

'Do what I tell you,' spirted Morris, as he took the corpse by the
shoulders. 'Am I to carry him myself?'

They were close upon the borders of the wood; in ten or twelve paces
they were under cover; and a little further back, in a sandy clearing of
the trees, they laid their burthen down, and stood and looked at it with
loathing.

'What do you mean to do?' whispered John.

'Bury him, to be sure,' responded Morris, and he opened his pocket-knife
and began feverishly to dig.

'You'll never make a hand of it with that,' objected the other.

'If you won't help me, you cowardly shirk,' screamed Morris, 'you can go
to the devil!'

'It's the childishest folly,' said John; 'but no man shall call me a
coward,' and he began to help his brother grudgingly.

The soil was sandy and light, but matted with the roots of the
surrounding firs. Gorse tore their hands; and as they baled the sand
from the grave, it was often discoloured with their blood. An hour
passed of unremitting energy upon the part of Morris, of lukewarm help
on that of John; and still the trench was barely nine inches in depth.
Into this the body was rudely flung: sand was piled upon it, and then
more sand must be dug, and gorse had to be cut to pile on that; and
still from one end of the sordid mound a pair of feet projected and
caught the light upon their patent-leather toes. But by this time the
nerves of both were shaken; even Morris had enough of his grisly task;
and they skulked off like animals into the thickest of the neighbouring
covert.

'It's the best that we can do,' said Morris, sitting down.

'And now,' said John, 'perhaps you'll have the politeness to tell me
what it's all about.'

'Upon my word,' cried Morris, 'if you do not understand for yourself, I
almost despair of telling you.'

'O, of course it's some rot about the tontine,' returned the other. 'But
it's the merest nonsense. We've lost it, and there's an end.'

'I tell you,' said Morris, 'Uncle Masterman is dead. I know it, there's
a voice that tells me so.'

'Well, and so is Uncle Joseph,' said John.

'He's not dead, unless I choose,' returned Morris.

'And come to that,' cried John, 'if you're right, and Uncle Masterman's
been dead ever so long, all we have to do is to tell the truth and
expose Michael.'

'You seem to think Michael is a fool,' sneered Morris. 'Can't you
understand he's been preparing this fraud for years? He has the whole
thing ready: the nurse, the doctor, the undertaker, all bought, the
certificate all ready but the date! Let him get wind of this business,
and you mark my words, Uncle Masterman will die in two days and be
buried in a week. But see here, Johnny; what Michael can do, I can do.
If he plays a game of bluff, so can I. If his father is to live for
ever, by God, so shall my uncle!'

'It's illegal, ain't it?' said John.

'A man must have SOME moral courage,' replied Morris with dignity.

'And then suppose you're wrong? Suppose Uncle Masterman's alive and
kicking?'

'Well, even then,' responded the plotter, 'we are no worse off than we
were before; in fact, we're better. Uncle Masterman must die some day;
as long as Uncle Joseph was alive, he might have died any day; but we're
out of all that trouble now: there's no sort of limit to the game that I
propose--it can be kept up till Kingdom Come.'

'If I could only see how you meant to set about it' sighed John. 'But
you know, Morris, you always were such a bungler.'

'I'd like to know what I ever bungled,' cried Morris; 'I have the best
collection of signet rings in London.'

'Well, you know, there's the leather business,' suggested the other.
'That's considered rather a hash.'

It was a mark of singular self-control in Morris that he suffered this
to pass unchallenged, and even unresented.

'About the business in hand,' said he, 'once we can get him up to
Bloomsbury, there's no sort of trouble. We bury him in the cellar, which
seems made for it; and then all I have to do is to start out and find a
venal doctor.'

'Why can't we leave him where he is?' asked John.

'Because we know nothing about the country,' retorted Morris. 'This wood
may be a regular lovers' walk. Turn your mind to the real difficulty.
How are we to get him up to Bloomsbury?'

Various schemes were mooted and rejected. The railway station at
Browndean was, of course, out of the question, for it would now be a
centre of curiosity and gossip, and (of all things) they would be
least able to dispatch a dead body without remark. John feebly proposed
getting an ale-cask and sending it as beer, but the objections to this
course were so overwhelming that Morris scorned to answer. The purchase
of a packing-case seemed equally hopeless, for why should two gentlemen
without baggage of any kind require a packing-case? They would be more
likely to require clean linen.

'We are working on wrong lines,' cried Morris at last. 'The thing must
be gone about more carefully. Suppose now,' he added excitedly, speaking
by fits and starts, as if he were thinking aloud, 'suppose we rent
a cottage by the month. A householder can buy a packing-case without
remark. Then suppose we clear the people out today, get the packing-case
tonight, and tomorrow I hire a carriage or a cart that we could
drive ourselves--and take the box, or whatever we get, to Ringwood or
Lyndhurst or somewhere; we could label it "specimens", don't you see?
Johnny, I believe I've hit the nail at last.'

'Well, it sounds more feasible,' admitted John.

'Of course we must take assumed names,' continued Morris. 'It would
never do to keep our own. What do you say to "Masterman" itself? It
sounds quiet and dignified.'

'I will NOT take the name of Masterman,' returned his brother; 'you may,
if you like. I shall call myself Vance--the Great Vance; positively the
last six nights. There's some go in a name like that.'

'Vance?' cried Morris. 'Do you think we are playing a pantomime for our
amusement? There was never anybody named Vance who wasn't a music-hall
singer.'

'That's the beauty of it,' returned John; 'it gives you some standing at
once. You may call yourself Fortescue till all's blue, and nobody cares;
but to be Vance gives a man a natural nobility.'

'But there's lots of other theatrical names,' cried Morris. 'Leybourne,
Irving, Brough, Toole--'

'Devil a one will I take!' returned his brother. 'I am going to have my
little lark out of this as well as you.'

'Very well,' said Morris, who perceived that John was determined to
carry his point, 'I shall be Robert Vance.'

'And I shall be George Vance,' cried John, 'the only original George
Vance! Rally round the only original!'

Repairing as well as they were able the disorder of their clothes, the
Finsbury brothers returned to Browndean by a circuitous route in quest
of luncheon and a suitable cottage. It is not always easy to drop at
a moment's notice on a furnished residence in a retired locality; but
fortune presently introduced our adventurers to a deaf carpenter, a man
rich in cottages of the required description, and unaffectedly eager to
supply their wants. The second place they visited, standing, as it did,
about a mile and a half from any neighbours, caused them to exchange a
glance of hope. On a nearer view, the place was not without depressing
features. It stood in a marshy-looking hollow of a heath; tall trees
obscured its windows; the thatch visibly rotted on the rafters; and the
walls were stained with splashes of unwholesome green. The rooms were
small, the ceilings low, the furniture merely nominal; a strange chill
and a haunting smell of damp pervaded the kitchen; and the bedroom
boasted only of one bed.

Morris, with a view to cheapening the place, remarked on this defect.

'Well,' returned the man; 'if you can't sleep two abed, you'd better
take a villa residence.'

'And then,' pursued Morris, 'there's no water. How do you get your
water?'

'We fill THAT from the spring,' replied the carpenter, pointing to a big
barrel that stood beside the door. 'The spring ain't so VERY far off,
after all, and it's easy brought in buckets. There's a bucket there.'

Morris nudged his brother as they examined the water-butt. It was
new, and very solidly constructed for its office. If anything had been
wanting to decide them, this eminently practical barrel would have
turned the scale. A bargain was promptly struck, the month's rent was
paid upon the nail, and about an hour later the Finsbury brothers might
have been observed returning to the blighted cottage, having along with
them the key, which was the symbol of their tenancy, a spirit-lamp, with
which they fondly told themselves they would be able to cook, a pork pie
of suitable dimensions, and a quart of the worst whisky in Hampshire.
Nor was this all they had effected; already (under the plea that they
were landscape-painters) they had hired for dawn on the morrow a light
but solid two-wheeled cart; so that when they entered in their new
character, they were able to tell themselves that the back of the
business was already broken.

John proceeded to get tea; while Morris, foraging about the house, was
presently delighted by discovering the lid of the water-butt upon the
kitchen shelf. Here, then, was the packing-case complete; in the absence
of straw, the blankets (which he himself, at least, had not the smallest
intention of using for their present purpose) would exactly take the
place of packing; and Morris, as the difficulties began to vanish from
his path, rose almost to the brink of exultation. There was, however,
one difficulty not yet faced, one upon which his whole scheme depended.
Would John consent to remain alone in the cottage? He had not yet dared
to put the question.

It was with high good-humour that the pair sat down to the deal table,
and proceeded to fall-to on the pork pie. Morris retailed the discovery
of the lid, and the Great Vance was pleased to applaud by beating on the
table with his fork in true music-hall style.

'That's the dodge,' he cried. 'I always said a water-butt was what you
wanted for this business.'

'Of course,' said Morris, thinking this a favourable opportunity to
prepare his brother, 'of course you must stay on in this place till I
give the word; I'll give out that uncle is resting in the New Forest. It
would not do for both of us to appear in London; we could never conceal
the absence of the old man.'

John's jaw dropped.

'O, come!' he cried. 'You can stay in this hole yourself. I won't.'

The colour came into Morris's cheeks. He saw that he must win his
brother at any cost.

'You must please remember, Johnny,' he said, 'the amount of the tontine.
If I succeed, we shall have each fifty thousand to place to our bank
account; ay, and nearer sixty.'

'But if you fail,' returned John, 'what then? What'll be the colour of
our bank account in that case?'

'I will pay all expenses,' said Morris, with an inward struggle; 'you
shall lose nothing.'

'Well,' said John, with a laugh, 'if the ex-s are yours, and
half-profits mine, I don't mind remaining here for a couple of days.'

'A couple of days!' cried Morris, who was beginning to get angry and
controlled himself with difficulty; 'why, you would do more to win five
pounds on a horse-race!'

'Perhaps I would,' returned the Great Vance; 'it's the artistic
temperament.'

'This is monstrous!' burst out Morris. 'I take all risks; I pay all
expenses; I divide profits; and you won't take the slightest pains to
help me. It's not decent; it's not honest; it's not even kind.'

'But suppose,' objected John, who was considerably impressed by his
brother's vehemence, 'suppose that Uncle Masterman is alive after all,
and lives ten years longer; must I rot here all that time?'

'Of course not,' responded Morris, in a more conciliatory tone; 'I only
ask a month at the outside; and if Uncle Masterman is not dead by that
time you can go abroad.'