Twelve Stories and a Dream

“Crown bags it,” I said, “all but one per cent. Go on. It’s a shame. What did you do?”

“Uncovered the top of the box. There wasn’t anybody in the garden or about like. Jane was ‘elping ‘er mother do the ‘ouse. I WAS excited – I tell you. I tried the lock and then gave a whack at the hinges. Open it came. Silver coins – full! Shining. It made me tremble to see ‘em. And jest then – I’m blessed if the dustman didn’t come round the back of the ‘ouse. It pretty nearly gave me ‘eart disease to think what a fool I was to ‘ave that money showing. And directly after I ‘eard the chap next door – ‘e was ‘olidaying, too – I ‘eard him watering ‘is beans. If only ‘e’d looked over the fence!”

“What did you do?”

“Kicked the lid on again and covered it up like a shot, and went on digging about a yard away from it – like mad. And my face, so to speak, was laughing on its own account till I had it hid. I tell you I was regular scared like at my luck. I jest thought that it ‘ad to be kep’ close and that was all. ‘Treasure,’ I kep’ whisperin’ to myself, ‘Treasure’ and ‘’undreds of pounds, ‘undreds, ‘undreds of pounds.’ Whispering to myself like, and digging like blazes. It seemed to me the box was regular sticking out and showing, like your legs do under the sheets in bed, and I went and put all the earth I’d got out of my ‘ole for the rockery slap on top of it. I WAS in a sweat. And in the midst of it all out toddles ‘er father. He didn’t say anything to me, jest stood behind me and stared, but Jane tole me afterwards when he went indoors, ‘e says, ‘That there jackanapes of yours, Jane’ – he always called me a jackanapes some’ow – ‘knows ‘ow to put ‘is back into it after all.’ Seemed quite impressed by it, ‘e did.”

“How long was the box?” I asked, suddenly.

“‘Ow long?” said Mr. Brisher.

“Yes – in length?”

“Oh! ‘bout so-by-so.” Mr. Brisher indicated a moderate-sized trunk.

“FULL?” said I.

“Full up of silver coins – ‘arf-crowns, I believe.”

“Why!” I cried, “that would mean – hundreds of pounds.”

“Thousands,” said Mr. Brisher, in a sort of sad calm. “I calc’lated it out.”

“But how did they get there?”

“All I know is what I found. What I thought at the time was this. The chap who’d owned the ‘ouse before ‘er father ‘d been a regular slap-up burglar. What you’d call a ‘igh-class criminal. Used to drive ‘is trap – like Peace did.” Mr. Brisher meditated on the difficulties of narration and embarked on a complicated parenthesis. “I don’t know if I told you it’d been a burglar’s ‘ouse before it was my girl’s father’s, and I knew ‘e’d robbed a mail train once, I did know that. It seemed to me – ”

“That’s very likely,” I said. “But what did you do?”

“Sweated,” said Mr. Brisher. “Regular run orf me. All that morning,” said Mr. Brisher, “I was at it, pretending to make that rockery and wondering what I should do. I’d ‘ave told ‘er father p’r’aps, only I was doubtful of ‘is honesty – I was afraid he might rob me of it like, and give it up to the authorities – and besides, considering I was marrying into the family, I thought it would be nicer like if it came through me. Put me on a better footing, so to speak. Well, I ‘ad three days before me left of my ‘olidays, so there wasn’t no hurry, so I covered it up and went on digging, and tried to puzzle out ‘ow I was to make sure of it. Only I couldn’t.

“I thought,” said Mr. Brisher, “AND I thought. Once I got regular doubtful whether I’d seen it or not, and went down to it and ‘ad it uncovered again, just as her ma came out to ‘ang up a bit of washin’ she’d done. Jumps again! Afterwards I was just thinking I’d ‘ave another go at it, when Jane comes to tell me dinner was ready. ‘You’ll want it,’ she said, ‘seeing all the ‘ole you’ve dug.’

“I was in a regular daze all dinner, wondering whether that chap next door wasn’t over the fence and filling ‘is pockets. But in the afternoon I got easier in my mind – it seemed to me it must ‘ave been there so long it was pretty sure to stop a bit longer – and I tried to get up a bit of a discussion to dror out the old man and see what ‘E thought of treasure trove.”

Mr. Brisher paused, and affected amusement at the memory.

“The old man was a scorcher,” he said; “a regular scorcher.”

“What!” said I; “did he – ?”

“It was like this,” explained Mr. Brisher, laying a friendly hand on my arm and breathing into my face to calm me. “Just to dror ‘im out, I told a story of a chap I said I knew – pretendin’, you know – who’d found a sovring in a novercoat ‘e’d borrowed. I said ‘e stuck to it, but I said I wasn’t sure whether that was right or not. And then the old man began. Lor’! ‘e DID let me ‘ave it!” Mr. Brisher affected an insincere amusement. “‘E was, well – what you might call a rare ‘and at Snacks. Said that was the sort of friend ‘e’d naturally expect me to ‘ave. Said ‘e’d naturally expect that from the friend of a out-of-work loafer who took up with daughters who didn’t belong to ‘im. There! I couldn’t tell you ‘ARF ‘e said. ‘E went on most outrageous. I stood up to ‘im about it, just to dror ‘im out. ‘Wouldn’t you stick to a ‘arf-sov’, not if you found it in the street?’ I says. ‘Certainly not,’ ‘e says; ‘certainly I wouldn’t.’ ‘What! not if you found it as a sort of treasure?’ ‘Young man,’ ‘e says, ‘there’s ‘i’er ‘thority than mine – Render unto Caesar’ – what is it? Yes. Well, he fetched up that. A rare ‘and at ‘itting you over the ‘ed with the Bible, was the old man. And so he went on. ‘E got to such Snacks about me at last I couldn’t stand it. I’d promised Jane not to answer ‘im back, but it got a bit TOO thick. I – I give it ‘im…”

Mr. Brisher, by means of enigmatical facework, tried to make me think he had had the best of that argument, but I knew better.

“I went out in a ‘uff at last. But not before I was pretty sure I ‘ad to lift that treasure by myself. The only thing that kep’ me up was thinking ‘ow I’d take it out of ‘im when I ‘ad the cash.”

There was a lengthy pause.

“Now, you’d ‘ardly believe it, but all them three days I never ‘ad a chance at the blessed treasure, never got out not even a ‘arf-crown. There was always a Somethink – always.

“‘Stonishing thing it isn’t thought of more,” said Mr. Brisher. “Finding treasure’s no great shakes. It’s gettin’ it. I don’t suppose I slep’ a wink any of those nights, thinking where I was to take it, what I was to do with it, ‘ow I was to explain it. It made me regular ill. And days I was that dull, it made Jane regular ‘uffy. ‘You ain’t the same chap you was in London,’ she says, several times. I tried to lay it on ‘er father and ‘is Snacks, but bless you, she knew better. What must she ‘ave but that I’d got another girl on my mind! Said I wasn’t True. Well, we had a bit of a row. But I was that set on the Treasure, I didn’t seem to mind a bit Anything she said.

“Well, at last I got a sort of plan. I was always a bit good at planning, though carrying out isn’t so much in my line. I thought it all out and settled on a plan. First, I was going to take all my pockets full of these ‘ere ‘arf-crowns – see? – and afterwards as I shall tell.

“Well, I got to that state I couldn’t think of getting at the Treasure again in the daytime, so I waited until the night before I had to go, and then, when everything was still, up I gets and slips down to the back door, meaning to get my pockets full. What must I do in the scullery but fall over a pail! Up gets ‘er father with a gun – ‘e was a light sleeper was ‘er father, and very suspicious and there was me: ‘ad to explain I’d come down to the pump for a drink because my water-bottle was bad. ‘E didn’t let me off a Snack or two over that bit, you lay a bob.”

“And you mean to say – ” I began.

“Wait a bit,” said Mr. Brisher. “I say, I’d made my plan. That put the kybosh on one bit, but it didn’t ‘urt the general scheme not a bit. I went and I finished that rockery next day, as though there wasn’t a Snack in the world; cemented over the stones, I did, dabbed it green and everythink. I put a dab of green just to show where the box was. They all came and looked at it, and sai ‘ow nice it was – even ‘e was a bit softer like to see it, and all he said was, ‘It’s a pity you can’t always work like that, then you might get something definite to do,’ he says.

“‘Yes,’ I says – I couldn’t ‘elp it – ‘I put a lot in that rockery,’ I says, like that. See? ‘I put a lot in that rockery’ – meaning – ”

“I see,” said I – for Mr. Brisher is apt to overelaborate his jokes.

“‘E didn’t,” said Mr. Brisher. “Not then, anyhow.

“Ar’ever – after all that was over, off I set for London… Orf I set for London.”

Pause.

“On’y I wasn’t going to no London,” said Mr. Brisher, with sudden animation, and thrusting his face into mine. “No fear! What do YOU think?

“I didn’t go no further than Colchester – not a yard.

“I’d left the spade just where I could find it. I’d got everything planned and right. I ‘ired a little trap in Colchester, and pretended I wanted to go to Ipswich and stop the night, and come back next day, and the chap I ‘ired it from made me leave two sovrings on it right away, and off I set.

“I didn’t go to no Ipswich neither.

“Midnight the ‘orse and trap was ‘itched by the little road that ran by the cottage where ‘e lived – not sixty yards off, it wasn’t – and I was at it like a good ‘un. It was jest the night for such games – overcast – but a trifle too ‘ot, and all round the sky there was summer lightning and presently a thunderstorm. Down it came. First big drops in a sort of fizzle, then ‘ail. I kep’on. I whacked at it – I didn’t dream the old man would ‘ear. I didn’t even trouble to go quiet with the spade, and the thunder and lightning and ‘ail seemed to excite me like. I shouldn’t wonder if I was singing. I got so ‘ard at it I clean forgot the thunder and the ‘orse and trap. I precious soon got the box showing, and started to lift it…”

“Heavy?” I said.

“I couldn’t no more lift it than fly. I WAS sick. I’d never thought of that I got regular wild – I tell you, I cursed. I got sort of outrageous. I didn’t think of dividing it like for the minute, and even then I couldn’t ‘ave took money about loose in a trap. I hoisted one end sort of wild like, and over the whole show went with a tremenjous noise. Perfeck smash of silver. And then right on the heels of that, Flash! Lightning like the day! and there was the back door open and the old man coming down the garden with ‘is blooming old gun. He wasn’t not a ‘undred yards away!

“I tell you I was that upset – I didn’t think what I was doing. I never stopped-not even to fill my pockets. I went over the fence like a shot, and ran like one o’clock for the trap, cussing and swearing as I went. I WAS in a state…

“And will you believe me, when I got to the place where I’d left the ‘orse and trap, they’d gone. Orf! When I saw that I ‘adn’t a cuss left for it. I jest danced on the grass, and when I’d danced enough I started off to London… I was done.”

Mr. Brisher was pensive for an interval. “I was done,” he repeated, very bitterly.

“Well?” I said.

“That’s all,” said Mr. Brisher.

“You didn’t go back?”

“No fear. I’d ‘ad enough of THAT blooming treasure, any’ow for a bit. Besides, I didn’t know what was done to chaps who tried to collar a treasure trove. I started off for London there and then…”

“And you never went back?”

“Never.”

“But about Jane? Did you write?”

“Three times, fishing like. And no answer. We’d parted in a bit of a ‘uff on account of ‘er being jealous. So that I couldn’t make out for certain what it meant.

“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know whether the old man knew it was me. I sort of kep’ an eye open on papers to see when he’d give up that treasure to the Crown, as I hadn’t a doubt ‘e would, considering ‘ow respectable he’d always been.”

“And did he?”

Mr. Brisher pursed his mouth and moved his head slowly from side to side. “Not ‘IM,” he said.

“Jane was a nice girl,” he said, “a thorough nice girl mind you, if jealous, and there’s no knowing I mightn’t ‘ave gone back to ‘er after a bit. I thought if he didn’t give up the treasure I might ‘ave a sort of ‘old on ‘im… Well, one day I looks as usual under Colchester – and there I saw ‘is name. What for, d’yer think?”

I could not guess.

Mr. Brisher’s voice sank to a whisper, and once more he spoke behind his hand. His manner was suddenly suffused with a positive joy. “Issuing counterfeit coins,” he said. “Counterfeit coins!”

“You don’t mean to say – ?”

“Yes-It. Bad. Quite a long case they made of it. But they got ‘im, though he dodged tremenjous. Traced ‘is ‘aving passed, oh! – nearly a dozen bad ‘arf-crowns.”

“And you didn’t – ?”

“No fear. And it didn’t do ‘IM much good to say it was treasure trove.”

12. MISS WINCHELSEA’S HEART

Miss Winchelsea was going to Rome. The matter had filled her mind for a month or more, and had overflowed so abundantly into her conversation that quite a number of people who were not going to Rome, and who were not likely to go to Rome, had made it a personal grievance against her. Some indeed had attempted quite unavailingly to convince her that Rome was not nearly such a desirable place as it was reported to be, and others had gone so far as to suggest behind her back that she was dreadfully “stuck up” about “that Rome of hers.” And little Lily Hardhurst had told her friend Mr. Binns that so far as she was concerned Miss Winchelsea might “go to her old Rome and stop there; SHE (Miss Lily Hardhurst) wouldn’t grieve.” And the way in which Miss Winchelsea put herself upon terms of personal tenderness with Horace and Benvenuto Cellini and Raphael and Shelley and Keats – if she had been Shelley’s widow she could not have professed a keener interest in his grave – was a matter of universal astonishment. Her dress was a triumph of tactful discretion, sensible, but not too “touristy” – Miss Winchelsea, had a great dread of being “touristy” – and her Baedeker was carried in a cover of grey to hide its glaring red. She made a prim and pleasant little figure on the Charing Cross platform, in spite of her swelling pride, when at last the great day dawned, and she could start for Rome. The day was bright, the Channel passage would be pleasant, and all the omens promised well. There was the gayest sense of adventure in this unprecedented departure.

She was going with two friends who had been fellow-students with her at the training college, nice honest girls both, though not so good at history and literature as Miss Winchelsea. They both looked up to her immensely, though physically they had to look down, and she anticipated some pleasant times to be spent in “stirring them up” to her own pitch of aesthetic and historical enthusiasm. They had secured seats already, and welcomed her effusively at the carriage door. In the instant criticism of the encounter she noted that Fanny had a slightly “touristy” leather strap, and that Helen had succumbed to a serge jacket with side pockets, into which her hands were thrust. But they were much too happy with themselves and the expedition for their friend to attempt any hint at the moment about these things. As soon as the first ecstasies were over – Fanny’s enthusiasm was a little noisy and crude, and consisted mainly in emphatic repetitions of “Just FANCY! we’re going to Rome, my dear! – Rome!” – they gave their attention to their fellow-travellers. Helen was anxious to secure a compartment to themselves, and, in order to discourage intruders, got out and planted herself firmly on the step. Miss Winchelsea peeped out over her shoulder, and made sly little remarks about the accumulating people on the platform, at which Fanny laughed gleefully.

They were travelling with one of Mr. Thomas Gunn’s parties – fourteen days in Rome for fourteen pounds. They did not belong to the personally conducted party of course – Miss Winchelsea had seen to that – but they travelled with it because of the convenience of that arrangement. The people were the oddest mixture, and wonderfully amusing. There was a vociferous red-faced polyglot personal conductor in a pepper-and-salt suit, very long in the arms and legs and very active. He shouted proclamations. When he wanted to speak to people he stretched out an arm and held them until his purpose was accomplished. One hand was full of papers, tickets, counterfoils of tourists. The people of the personally conducted party were, it seemed, of two sorts; people the conductor wanted and could not find, and people he did not want and who followed him in a steadily growing tail up and down the platform. These people seemed, indeed, to think that their one chance of reaching Rome lay in keeping close to him. Three little old ladies were particularly energetic in his pursuit, and at last maddened him to the pitch of clapping them into a carriage and daring them to emerge again. For the rest of the time, one, two, or three of their heads protruded from the window wailing enquiries about “a little wickerwork box” whenever he drew near. There was a very stout man with a very stout wife in shiny black; there was a little old man like an aged hostler.

“What CAN such people want in Rome?” asked Miss Winchelsea. “What can it mean to them?” There was a very tall curate in a very small straw hat, and a very short curate encumbered by a long camera stand. The contrast amused Fanny very much. Once they heard some one calling for “Snooks.” “I always thought that name was invented by novelists,” said Miss Winchelsea. “Fancy! Snooks. I wonder which IS Mr. Snooks.” Finally they picked out a very stout and resolute little man in a large check suit. “If he isn’t Snooks, he ought to be,” said Miss Winchelsea.

Presently the conductor discovered Helen’s attempt at a corner in carriages. “Room for five,” he bawled with a parallel translation on his fingers. A party of four together – mother, father, and two daughters – blundered in, all greatly excited. “It’s all right, Ma, you let me,” said one of the daughters, hitting her mother’s bonnet with a handbag she struggled to put in the rack. Miss Winchelsea detested people who banged about and called their mother “Ma.” A young man travelling alone followed. He was not at all “touristy” in his costume, Miss Winchelsea observed; his Gladstone bag was of good pleasant leather with labels reminiscent of Luxembourg and Ostend, and his boots, though brown, were not vulgar. He carried an overcoat on his arm. Before these people had properly settled in their places, came an inspection of tickets and a slamming of doors, and behold! they were gliding out of Charing Cross station on their way to Rome.

“Fancy!” cried Fanny, “we are going to Rome, my dear! Rome! I don’t seem to believe it, even now.”

Miss Winchelsea suppressed Fanny’s emotions with a little smile, and the lady who was called “Ma” explained to people in general why they had “cut it so close” at the station. The two daughters called her “Ma” several times, toned her down in a tactless effective way, and drove her at last to the muttered inventory of a basket of travelling requisites. Presently she looked up. “Lor’!” she said, “I didn’t bring THEM!” Both the daughters said “Oh, Ma!” but what “them” was did not appear. Presently Fanny produced Hare’s Walks in Rome, a sort of mitigated guide-book very popular among Roman visitors; and the father of the two daughters began to examine his books of tickets minutely, apparently in a search after English words. When he had looked at the tickets for a long time right way up, he turned them upside down. Then he produced a fountain pen and dated them with considerable care. The young man, having completed an unostentatious survey of his fellow travellers, produced a book and fell to reading. When Helen and Fanny were looking out of the window at Chiselhurst – the place interested Fanny because the poor dear Empress of the French used to live there – Miss Winchelsea took the opportunity to observe the book the young man held. It was not a guide-book, but a little thin volume of poetry – BOUND. She glanced at his face – it seemed a refined pleasant face to her hasty glance. He wore a little gilt pince-nez. “Do you think she lives there now?” said Fanny, and Miss Winchelsea’s inspection came to an end.

For the rest of the journey Miss Winchelsea talked little, and what she said was as pleasant and as stamped with refinement as she could make it. Her voice was always low and clear and pleasant, and she took care that on this occasion it was particularly low and clear and pleasant. As they came under the white cliffs the young man put his book of poetry away, and when at last the train stopped beside the boat, he displayed a graceful alacrity with the impedimenta of Miss Winchelsea and her friends. Miss Winchelsea hated nonsense, but she was pleased to see the young man perceived at once that they were ladies, and helped them without any violent geniality; and how nicely he showed that his civilities were to be no excuse for further intrusions. None of her little party had been out of England before, and they were all excited and a little nervous at the Channel passage. They stood in a little group in a good place near the middle of the boat – the young man had taken Miss Winchelsea’s carry-all there and had told her it was a good place – and they watched the white shores of Albion recede and quoted Shakespeare and made quiet fun of their fellow travellers in the English way.

They were particularly amused at the precautions the bigger-sized people had taken against the little waves – cut lemons and flasks prevailed, one lady lay full-length in a deck chair with a handkerchief over her face, and a very broad resolute man in a bright brown “touristy” suit walked all the way from England to France along the deck, with his legs as widely apart as Providence permitted. These were all excellent precautions, and, nobody was ill. The personally conducted party pursued the conductor about the deck with enquiries in a manner that suggested to Helen’s mind the rather vulgar image of hens with a piece of bacon peel, until at last he went into hiding below. And the young man with the thin volume of poetry stood at the stern watching England receding, looking rather lonely and sad to Miss Winchelsea’s eye.

And then came Calais and tumultuous novelties, and the young man had not forgotten Miss Winchelsea’s hold-all and the other little things. All three girls, though they had passed government examinations in French to any extent, were stricken with a dumb shame of their accents, and the young man was very useful. And he did not intrude. He put them in a comfortable carriage and raised his hat and went away. Miss Winchelsea thanked him in her best manner – a pleasing, cultivated manner – and Fanny said he was “nice” almost before he was out of earshot. “I wonder what he can be,” said Helen. “He’s going to Italy, because I noticed green tickets in his book.” Miss Winchelsea almost told them of the poetry, and decided not to do so. And presently the carriage windows seized hold upon them and the young man was forgotten. It made them feel that they were doing an educated sort of thing to travel through a country whose commonest advertisements were in idiomatic French, and Miss Winchelsea made unpatriotic comparisons because there were weedy little sign-board advertisements by the rail side instead of the broad hoardings that deface the landscape in our land. But the north of France is really uninteresting country, and after a time Fanny reverted to Hare’s Walks and Helen initiated lunch. Miss Winchelsea awoke out of a happy reverie; she had been trying to realise, she said, that she was actually going to Rome, but she perceived at Helen’s suggestion that she was hungry, and they lunched out of their baskets very cheerfully. In the afternoon they were tired and silent until Helen made tea. Miss Winchelsea might have dozed, only she knew Fanny slept with her mouth open; and as their fellow passengers were two rather nice critical-looking ladies of uncertain age – who knew French well enough to talk it – she employed herself in keeping Fanny awake. The rhythm of the train became insistent, and the streaming landscape outside became at last quite painful to the eye. They were already dreadfully tired of travelling before their night’s stoppage came.

The stoppage for the night was brightened by the appearance of the young man, and his manners were all that could be desired and his French quite serviceable. His coupons availed for the same hotel as theirs, and by chance as it seemed he sat next Miss Winchelsea at the table d’hote. In spite of her enthusiasm for Rome, she had thought out some such possibility very thoroughly, and when he ventured to make a remark upon the tediousness of travelling – he let the soup and fish go by before he did this – she did not simply assent to his proposition, but responded with another. They were soon comparing their journeys, and Helen and Fanny were cruelly overlooked in the conversation. It was to be the same journey, they found; one day for the galleries at Florence – “from what I hear,” said the young man, “it is barely enough,” – and the rest at Rome. He talked of Rome very pleasantly; he was evidently quite well read, and he quoted Horace about Soracte. Miss Winchelsea had “done” that book of Horace for her matriculation, and was delighted to cap his quotation. It gave a sort of tone to things, this incident – a touch of refinement to mere chatting. Fanny expressed a few emotions, and Helen interpolated a few sensible remarks, but the bulk of the talk on the girls’ side naturally fell to Miss Winchelsea.