by Ellen Wood
“Why do you say that, Miss Parslet?”
“Because papa — but I do not think I ought to tell you,” added Maria, breaking off abruptly.
“Oh yes, you may. I am quite safe, even if it’s a secret. Please do.”
“Well,” cried the easily persuaded girl, “papa has always had an uncomfortable feeling upon him ever since the loss. He feared that some people, knowing he was not well off, might think perhaps it was he who had stolen upstairs and taken it.”
Sam laughed at that.
“He has never said so, but somehow we have seen it, my mother and I. It was altogether so mysterious a loss, you see, affording no clue as to when it occurred, that people were ready to suspect anything, however improbable. Oh, I am thankful it is found!”
The kettle went on singing, the minutes went on flitting, and still nobody came. Six o’clock struck out from the cathedral as Mr. Parslet entered. Had the two been asked the time, they might have said it was about a quarter-past five. Golden hours fly quickly; fly on angels’ wings.
Now it chanced that whilst they were at tea, a creditor of Sam’s came to the door, one Jonas Badger. Sam went to him: and the colloquy that ensued might be heard in the parlour. Mr. Badger said (in quite a fatherly way) that he really could not be put off any longer with promises; if his money was not repaid to him before Easter he should be obliged to take steps about it, should write to Mr. Jacobson, of Elm Farm, to begin with. Sam returned to the tea-table with a wry face.
Soon after that, Mrs. Parslet came in, the delinquent servant in her rear. Next, a friend of Sam’s called, Austin Chance, whose father was a solicitor in good practice in the town. The two young men, who were very intimate and often together, went up to Sam’s room above.
“I say, my good young friend,” began Chance, in a tone that might be taken for jest or earnest, “don’t you go and get into any entanglement in that quarter.”
“What d’you mean now?” demanded Sam, turning the colour of the rising sun.
“I mean Maria Parslet,” said Austin Chance, laughing. “She’s a deuced nice girl; I know that; just the one a fellow might fall in love with unawares. But it wouldn’t do, Dene.”
“Why wouldn’t it do?”
“Oh, come now, Sam, you know it wouldn’t. Parslet is only a working clerk at Cockermuth’s.”
“I should like to know what has put the thought in your head?” contended Sam. “You had better put it out again. I’ve never told you I was falling in love with her; or told herself, either. Mrs. Parslet would be about me, I expect, if I did. She looks after her as one looks after gold.”
“Well, I found you in their room, having tea with them, and — —”
“It was quite an accident; an exceptional thing,” interrupted Sam.
“Well,” repeated Austin, “you need not put your back up, old fellow; a friendly warning does no harm. Talking of gold, Dene, I’ve done my best to get up the twenty pounds you wanted to borrow of me, and I can’t do it. I’d let you have it with all my heart if I could; but I find I am harder up than I thought for.”
Which was all true. Chance was as good-natured a young man as ever lived, but at this early stage of his life he made more debts than he could pay.
“Badger has just been here, whining and covertly threatening,” said Sam. “I am to pay up in a week, or he’ll make me pay — and tell my uncle, he says, to begin with.”
“Hypocritical old skinflint!” ejaculated Chance, himself sometimes in the hands of Mr. Badger — a worthy gentleman who did a little benevolent usury in a small and quiet way, and took his delight in accommodating safe young men. A story was whispered that young M., desperately hard-up, borrowed two pounds from him one Saturday night, undertaking to repay it, with two pounds added on for interest, that day month; and when the day came and M. had not got the money, or was at all likely to get it, he carried off a lot of his mother’s plate under his coat to the pawnbroker’s.
“And there’s more besides Badger’s that is pressing,” went on Dene. “I must get money from somewhere, or it will play the very deuce with me. I wonder whether Charley Hill could lend me any?”
“Don’t much think so. You might ask him. Money seems scarce with Hill always. Has a good many ways for it, I fancy.”
“Talking of money, Chance, a lot has been found at Cockermuth’s to-day. A boxful of guineas that has been lost for years.”
Austin Chance stared. “You don’t mean that box of guineas that mysteriously disappeared in Philip’s time?”
“Well, they say so. It is a small, round box of carved ebony, and it is stuffed to the brim with old guineas. Sixty of them, I hear.”
“I can’t believe it’s true; that that’s found.”
“Not believe it’s true, Chance! Why, I saw it. Saw the box found, and touched the guineas with my fingers. It has been hidden in an old bureau all the time,” added Sam, and he related the particulars of the discovery.
“What an extraordinary thing!” exclaimed young Chance: “the queerest start I ever heard of.” And he fell to musing.
But the “queer start,” as Mr. Austin Chance was pleased to designate the resuscitation of the box, did not prove to be a lucky one.
II.
The sun shone brightly on Foregate Street, but did not yet touch the front-windows on Lawyer Cockermuth’s side of it. Miss Betty Cockermuth sat near one of them in the parlour, spectacles on nose, and hard at work unpicking the braid off some very old woollen curtains, green once, but now faded to a sort of dingy brown. It was Wednesday morning, the day following the wonderful event of finding the box, lost so long, full of its golden guineas. In truth nobody thought of it as anything less than marvellous.
The house-cleaning, in preparation for Easter and Easter’s visitors, was in full flow to-day, and would be for more than a week to come; the two maids were hard at it above. Ward, who did not disdain to labour with his own hands, was at the house, busy at some mysterious business in the brewhouse, coat off, shirt-sleeves stripped up to elbow, plunging at that moment something or other into the boiling water of the furnace.
“How I could have let them remain up so long in this state, I can’t think,” said Miss Betty to herself, arresting her employment, scissors in hand, to regard the dreary curtains. She had drawn the table towards her from the middle of the room, and the heavy work was upon it. Susan came in to impart some domestic news.
“Ward says there’s a rare talk in the town about the finding of that box, missis,” cried she, when she had concluded it. “My! how bad them curtains look, now they’re down!”
Servants were on more familiar terms with their mistresses in those days without meaning, or showing, any disrespect; identifying themselves, as it were, with the family and its interests. Susan, a plump, red-cheeked young woman turned thirty, had been housemaid in her present place for seven years. She had promised a baker’s head man to marry him, but never could be got to fix the day. In winter she’d say to him, “Wait till summer;” and when summer came, she’d say, “Wait till winter.” Miss Betty commended her prudence.
“Yes,” said she now, in answer to the girl, “I’ve been wondering how we could have kept them up so long; they are not fit for much, I’m afraid, save the ragbag. Chintz will make the room look much nicer.”
As Susan left the parlour, Captain Cockermuth entered it, a farmer with him who had come in from Hallow to the Wednesday’s market. The captain’s delighted excitement at the finding of the box had not at all subsided; he had dreamt of it, he talked of it, he pinned every acquaintance he could pick up this morning and brought him in to see the box of gold. Independently of its being a very great satisfaction to have had the old mysterious loss cleared up, the sixty guineas would be a huge boon to the captain’s pocket.
“But how was it that none of you ever found it, if it remained all this while in the pigeon-hole?” cried the wondering farmer, bending over the little round box of guineas, which the captain placed upon the table o
pen, the lid by its side.
“Well, we didn’t find it, that’s all I know; or poor Philip, either,” said Captain Cockermuth.
The farmer took his departure. As the captain was showing him to the front-door, another gentleman came hustling in. It was Thomas Chance the lawyer, father of the young man who had been the previous night with Samson Dene. He and Lawyer Cockermuth were engaged together just then in some complicated, private, and very disagreeable business, each acting for a separate client, who were the defendants against a great wrong — or what they thought was one.
“Come in, Chance, and take a look at my box of guineas, resuscitated from the grave,” cried the captain, joyously. “You can go into the office to John afterwards.”
“Well, I’ve hardly time this morning,” answered Mr. Chance, turning, though, into the parlour and shaking hands with Miss Betty. “Austin told me it was found.”
Now it happened that Lawyer Cockermuth came then into the parlour himself, to get something from his private desk-table which stood there. When the box had been discussed, Mr. Chance took a letter from his pocket and placed it in his brother practitioner’s hands.
“What do you think of that?” he asked. “I got it by post this morning.”
“Think! why, that it is of vital importance,” said Mr. Cockermuth when he had read it.
“Yes; no doubt of that. But what is to be our next move in answer to it?” asked the other.
Seeing they were plunging into business, the captain strolled away to the front-door, which stood open all day, for the convenience of those coming to the office, and remained there whistling, his hands in his pockets, on the look out for somebody else to bring in. He had put the lid on the box of guineas, and left the box on the table.
“I should like to take a copy of this letter,” said Mr. Cockermuth to the other lawyer.
“Well, you can take it,” answered Chance. “Mind who does it, though — Parslet, or somebody else that’s confidential. Don’t let it go into the office.”
“You are wanted, sir,” said Mr. Dene, from the door.
“Who is it?” asked his master.
“Mr. Chamberlain. He says he is in a hurry.”
“I’m coming. Here, Dene!” he called out as the latter was turning away: and young Dene came back again.
“Sit down here, now, and take a copy of this letter,” cried the lawyer, rapidly drawing out and opening the little writing-desk table that stood against the wall at the back of the room. “Here’s pen, ink and paper, all ready: the letter is confidential, you perceive.”
He went out of the room as he spoke, Mr. Chance with him; and Sam Dene sat down to commence his task, after exchanging a few words with Miss Betty, with whom he was on good terms.
“Charles makes as much fuss over this little box as if it were filled with diamonds from Golconda, instead of guineas,” remarked she, pointing with her scissors to the box, which stood near her on the table, to direct the young man’s attention to it. “I don’t know how many folks he has not brought in already to have a look at it.”
“Well, it was a capital find, Miss Betty; one to be proud of,” answered Sam, settling to his work.
For some little time nothing was heard but the scratching of Mr. Dene’s pen and the clicking of Miss Betty’s scissors. Her task was nearing completion. A few minutes more, and the last click was given, the last bit of the braid was off. “And I’m glad of it,” cried she aloud, flinging the end of the curtain on the top of the rest.
“This braid will do again for something or other,” considered Miss Betty, as she began to wind it upon an old book. “It was put on fresh only three or four years ago. Well brushed, it will look almost like new.”
Again Susan opened the door. “Miss Betty, here’s the man come with the chintz: five or six rolls of it for you to choose from,” cried she. “Shall he come in here?”
Miss Betty was about to say Yes, but stopped and said No, instead. The commotion of holding up the chintzes to the light, to judge of their different merits, might disturb Mr. Dene; and she knew better than to interrupt business.
“Let him take them to the room where they are to hang, Susan; we can judge best there.”
Tossing the braid to Susan, who stood waiting at the door, Miss Betty hastily took up her curtains, and Susan held the door open for her mistress to pass through.
Choosing chintz for window-curtains takes some time; as everybody knows whose fancy is erratic. And how long Miss Betty and Susan and the young man from the chintz-mart had been doubting and deciding and doubting again, did not quite appear, when Captain Cockermuth’s voice was heard ascending from below.
“Betty! Are you upstairs, Betty?”
“Yes, I’m here,” she called back, crossing to the door to speak. “Do you want me, Charles?”
“Where have you put the box?”
“What box?”
“The box of guineas.”
“It is on the table.”
“It is not on the table. I can’t see it anywhere.”
“It was on the table when I left the parlour. I did not touch it. Ask Mr. Dene where it is: I left him there.”
“Mr. Dene’s not here. I wish you’d come down.”
“Very well; I’ll come in a minute or two,” concluded Miss Betty, going back to the chintzes.
“Why, I saw that box on the table as I shut the door after you had come out, ma’am,” observed Susan, who had listened to the colloquy.
“So did I,” said Miss Betty; “it was the very last thing my eyes fell on. If young Mr. Dene finished what he was about and left the parlour, I dare say he put the box up somewhere for safety. I think, Susan, we must fix upon this light pea-green with the rosebuds running up it. It matches the paper: and the light coming through it takes quite a nice shade.”
A little more indecision yet; and yet a little more, as to whether the curtains should be lined, or not, and then Miss Cockermuth went downstairs. The captain was pacing the passage to and fro impatiently.
“Now then, Betty, where’s my box?”
“But how am I to know where the box is, Charles, if it’s not on the table?” she remonstrated, turning into the parlour, where two friends of the captain’s waited to be regaled with the sight of the recovered treasure. “I had to go upstairs with the young man who brought the chintzes; and I left the box here” — indicating the exact spot on the table. “It was where you left it yourself. I did not touch it at all.”
She shook hands with the visitors. Captain Cockermuth looked gloomy — as if he were at sea and had lost his reckoning.
“If you had to leave the room, why didn’t you put the box up?” asked he. “A boxful of guineas shouldn’t be left alone in an empty room.”
“But Mr. Dene was in the room; he sat at the desk there, copying a letter for John. As to why didn’t I put the box up, it was not my place to do so that I know of. You were about yourself, Charles — only at the front-door, I suppose.”
Captain Cockermuth was aware that he had not been entirely at the front-door. Two or three times he had crossed over to hold a chat with acquaintances on the other side the way; had strolled with one of them nearly up to Salt Lane and back. Upon catching hold of these two gentlemen, now brought in, he had found the parlour empty of occupants and the box not to be seen.
“Well, this is a nice thing — that a man can’t put his hand upon his own property when he wants to, or hear where it is!” grumbled he. “And what business on earth had Dene to meddle with the box?”
“To put it in safety — if he did meddle with it, and a sensible thing to do,” retorted Miss Betty, who did not like to be scolded unjustly. “Just like you, Charles, making a fuss over nothing! Why don’t you go and ask young Dene where it is?”
“Young Dene is not in. And John’s not in. Nobody is in but Parslet; and he does not know anything about it. I must say, Betty, you manage the house nicely!” concluded the captain ironically, giving way to his temper.
&n
bsp; This was, perhaps the reader may think, commotion enough “over nothing,” as Miss Betty put it. But it was not much as compared with the commotion which set in later. When Mr. Cockermuth came in, he denied all knowledge of it, and Sam Dene was impatiently waited for.
It was past two o’clock when he returned, for he had been home to dinner. The good-looking young fellow turned in at the front-door with a fleet step, and encountered Captain Cockermuth, who attacked him hotly, demanding what he had done with the box.
“Ah,” said Sam, lightly and coolly, “Parslet said you were looking for it.” Mr. Parslet had in fact mentioned it at home over his dinner.
“Well, where is it?” said the captain. “Where did you put it?”
“I?” cried young Dene. “Not anywhere. Should I be likely to touch the box, sir? I saw the box on that table while I was copying a letter for Mr. Cockermuth; that’s all I know of it.”
The captain turned red, and pale, and red again. “Do you mean to tell me to my face, Mr. Dene, that the box is gone?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Sam in the easiest of all easy tones. “It seems to be gone.”
The box was gone. Gone once more with all its golden guineas. It could not be found anywhere; in the house or out of the house, upstairs or down. The captain searched frantically, the others helped him, but no trace of it could be found.
At first it was impossible to believe it. That this self-same box should mysteriously have vanished a second time, seemed to be too marvellous for fact. But it was true.
Nobody would admit a share in the responsibility. The captain left the box safe amidst (as he put it) a roomful of people: Miss Betty considered that she left it equally safe, with Mr. Dene seated at the writing-table, and the captain dodging (as she put it) in and out. Mr. Cockermuth had not entered the parlour since he left it, when called to Mr. Chamberlain, with whom he had gone out. Sam Dene reiterated that he had not meddled with the box; no, nor thought about it.