Book: In Luck at Last

W >> Walter Besant >> In Luck at Last




"Oh, not second-hand volumes, grandfather," said Iris.

"I don't know. Certainly not new ones. Not volumes under
one-and-twenty, if you please. Mr. Arbuthnot, I am glad; you will know
why very soon. I am very glad that Iris made her choice before her
twenty-first birthday. Whatever may happen now, no one can say that
either of you was influenced by any expectations. You both think
yourself paupers; well, I say nothing, because I know nothing. But,
children, if a great thing happen to you, and that before
four-and-twenty hours have passed, be prepared--be prepared, I say--to
receive it with moderate rejoicing."

"To-morrow?" Iris asked. "Why to-morrow? Why not to-night, if you have
a secret to tell us?"

"Your father enjoined in his last letter to wait till you were
twenty-one. The eve of your birthday, however, is the same thing as
your birthday. We will open the papers to-night. What I have to tell
you, Iris, shall be told in the presence of your lover, whatever it
is--good or bad."

He led the way down-stairs into the back shop. Here he lit the gas,
and began to open his case, slowly and cautiously.

"Eighteen years ago, Iris, my child, I received your father's last
letter, written on his death bed. This I have already told you. He set
down, in that letter, several things which surprised me very much. We
shall come to these things presently. He also laid down certain
instructions for your bringing up, my dear. I was, first of all, to
give you as good an education as I could afford; I was to keep you as
much as possible separated from companions who might not be thought
afterward fit to be the friends of a young lady. You have as good an
education as Lala Roy and I could devise between us. From him you have
learned mathematics, so as to steady your mind and make you exact; and
you have learned the science of heraldry from me, so that you may at
once step into your own place in the polite world, where, no doubt, it
is a familiar and a necessary study. You have also learned music,
because that is an accomplishment which every one should possess. What
more can any girl want for any station? My dear, I am happy to think
that a gentleman is your lover. Let him tell us, now--Lala Roy and
me--to our very faces, if he thinks we have, between us, made you a
lady."

Arnold stooped and kissed her hand.

"There is no more perfect lady," he said, "in all the land."

"Iris's father, Mr. Arbuthnot, was a gentleman of honorable and
ancient family, and I will tell you, presently, as soon as I find it
out myself, his real name. As for his coat-of-arms, he bore Quarterly,
first and fourth, two roses and a boar's head erect; second and third,
gules and fesse between--strange, now that I have forgotten what it
was between. Everybody calls himself a gentleman nowadays; even Mr.
Chalker, who is going to sell me up, I suppose; but everybody, if you
please, is not armiger. Iris, your father was armiger. I suppose I am
a gentleman on Sundays, when I go to church with Iris, and wear a
black coat. But your father, my dear, though he married my daughter,
was a gentleman by birth. And one who knows heraldry respects a
gentleman by birth." He laid his hand now on the handle of the safe,
as if the time were nearly come for opening it, but not quite. "He
sent me, with this last letter, a small parcel for you, my dear, not
to be opened until you reached the age of twenty-one. As for the
person who had succeeded to his inheritance, she was to be left in
peaceable possession for a reason which he gave--quite a romantic
story, which I will tell you presently--until you came of age. He was
very urgent on this point. If, however, any disaster of sickness or
misfortune fell upon me, I was to act in your interests at once,
without waiting for time. Children," the old man added solemnly, "by
the blessing of Heaven--I cannot take it as anything less--I have been
spared in health and fortune until this day. Now let me depart in
peace, for my trust is expired, and my child is safe, her inheritance
secured, with a younger and better protector." He placed the key in
the door of the safe. "I do not know, mind," he said, still hesitating
to take the final step; "I do not know the nature of the inheritance;
it may be little or maybe great. The letter does not inform me on this
point. I do not even know the name of the testator, my son-in-law's
father. Nor do I know the name of my daughter's husband. I do not even
know your true name, Iris, my child. But it is not Aglen."

"Then, have I been going under a false name all my life?"

"It was the name your father chose to bear for reasons which seemed
good and sufficient to him, and these are part of the story which I
shall have to tell you. Will you have this story first, or shall we
first open the safe and read the contents of the parcel?"

"First," said Arnold, "let us sit down and look in each other's
faces."

It was a practical suggestion. But, as it proved, it was an unlucky
one, because it deprived them of the story.

"Iris," he said, while they waited, "this is truly wonderful!"

"Oh, Arnold! What am I to do with an inheritance?"

"That depends on what it is. Perhaps it is a landed estate; in which
case we shall not be much better off, and can go on with our work;
perhaps there will be houses; perhaps it will be thousands of pounds,
and perhaps hundreds. Shall we build a castle in the air to suit our
inheritance?"

"Yes; let us pretend. Oh, grandfather, stop one moment! Our castle,
Arnold, shall be, first of all, the most beautiful studio in the world
for you. You shall have tapestry, blue china, armor, lovely glass,
soft carpets, carved doors and painted panels, a tall mantelshelf,
old wooden cabinets, silver cups, and everything else what one ought
to like, and you shall choose everything for yourself, and never get
tired of it. But you must go on painting; you must never stop working,
because we must be proud of you as well that you like. Oh, but I have
not done yet. My grandfather is to have two rooms for himself, which
he can fill with the books he will spend his time in collecting; Lala
Roy will have two more rooms, quite separate, where he can sit by
himself whenever he does not choose to sit with me; I shall have my
own study to myself, where I shall go on reading mathematics; and we
shall all have, between us, the most beautiful dining-room and
drawing-room that you ever saw; and a garden and a fountain,
and--yes--money to give to people who are not so fortunate as
ourselves. Will that do, Arnold?"

"Yes, but you have almost forgotten yourself, dear. There must be
carriages for you, and jewels, and dainty things all your own, and a
boudoir, and nobody shall think of doing or saying anything in the
house at all, except for your pleasure; will that do, Iris?"

"I suppose we shall have to give parties of some kind, and to go to
them. Perhaps one may get to like society. You will teach me
lawn-tennis, Arnold; and I should like, I think, to learn dancing. I
suppose I must leave off making my own dresses, though I know that I
shall never be so well dressed if I do. And about the cakes and
puddings--but, oh, there is enough pretending."

"It is difficult," said Lala Roy, "to bear adversity. But to be
temperate in prosperity is the height of wisdom."

"And now suppose, Iris," said Arnold "that the inheritance, instead
of being thousands a year, is only a few hundreds."

"Ah, then, Arnold, it will be ever so much simpler. We shall have
something to live upon until you begin to make money for us all."

"Yes; that is very simple. But suppose, again, that the inheritance is
nothing but a small sum of money."

"Why, then," said Iris, "we will give it all to grandfather, who will
pay off his creditor, and we will go on as if nothing had happened."

"Child!" said Mr. Emblem, "do you think that I would take your little
all?"

"And suppose, again," Arnold went on, "that the inheritance turns out
a delusion, and that there is nothing at all?"

"That cannot be supposed," said Mr. Emblem quickly; "that is absurd!"

"If it were," said Iris, "we shall only be, to-morrow, just exactly
what we are to-day. I am a teacher by correspondence, with five
pupils. Arnold is looking for art-work, which will pay; and between
us, my dear grandfather and Lala Roy, we are going to see that you
want nothing."

Always Lala Roy with her grandfather, as if their interests were
identical, and, indeed, he had lived so long with them that Iris could
not separate the two old men.

"We will all live together," Iris continued, "and when our fortune is
made we will all live in a palace. And now, grandfather, that we have
relieved our feelings, shall we have the story and the opening of the
papers in the safe?"

"Which will you have first?" Mr. Emblem asked again.

"Oh, the safe," said Arnold. "The story can wait. Let us examine the
contents of the safe."

"The story," said Mr. Emblem, "is nearly all told in your father's
letter, my dear. But there is a little that I would tell you first,
before I read that letter. You know, Iris, that I have never been
rich; my shop has kept me up till now, but I have never been able to
put by money. Well--my daughter Alice, your poor mother, my dear, who
was as good and clever as you are, was determined to earn her own
living, and so she went out as a governess. And one day she came home
with her husband; she had been married the day before, and she told me
they had very little money, and her husband was a scholar and a
gentleman, and wanted to get work by writing. He got some, but not
enough, and they were always in a poor way, until one day he got a
letter from America--it was while the Civil War was raging--from an
old Oxford friend, inviting him to emigrate and try fortune as a
journalist out there. He went, and his wife was to join him. But she
died, my dear; your mother died, and a year later I had your father's
last letter, which I am now going to read to you."

"One moment, sir," said Arnold. "Before you open the safe and take out
the papers, remember that Iris and I can take nothing--nothing at all
for ourselves until all your troubles are tided over."

"Children--children," cried Mr. Emblem.

"Go, my son, to the Desert," observed the Sage, standing solemnly
upright like a Prophet of Israel. "Observe the young stork of the
wilderness, how he beareth on his wings his aged sire and supplieth
him with food. The piety of a child is sweeter than the incense of
Persia offered to the sun; yea, more delicious is it than the odors
from a field of Arabian spice."

"Thank you, Lala," said Mr. Emblem. "And now, children, we will
discover the mystery."

He unlocked the safe and threw it open with somewhat of a theatrical
air. "The roll of papers." He took it out. "'For Iris to be opened on
her twenty-first birthday.' And this is the eve of it. But where is
the letter? I tied the letter round it, with a piece of tape. Very
strange. I am sure I tied the letter with a piece of tape. Perhaps it
was--Where is the letter?"

He peered about in the safe; there was nothing else in it except a few
old account books; but he could not find the letter! Where could it
be?

"I remember," he said--"most distinctly I remember tying up the
letter with the parcel. Where can it be gone to?"

A feeling of trouble to come seized him. He was perfectly sure he had
tied up the letter with the parcel, and here was the parcel without
the letter, and no one had opened the safe except himself.

"Never mind about the letter, grandfather," said Iris; "we shall find
that afterward."

"Well, then, let us open the parcel."

It was a packet about the size of a crown-octavo volume, in brown
paper, carefully fastened up with gum, and on the face of it was a
white label inscribed: "For Iris, to be opened on her twenty-first
birthday." Everybody in turn took it, weighed it, so to speak, looked
at it curiously, and read the legend. Then they returned it to Mr.
Emblem, who laid it before him and produced a penknife. With this, as
carefully and solemnly as if he were offering up a sacrifice or
performing a religious function, he cut the parcel straight through.

"After eighteen years," he said; "after eighteen years. The ink will
be faded and the papers yellow. But we shall see the certificates of
the marriage and of your baptism, Iris; there will also be letters to
different people, and a true account of the rupture with his father,
and the cause, of which his letter spoke. And of course we shall find
out what was his real name and what is the kind of inheritance which
has been waiting for you so long, my dear. Now then."

The covering incase of the packet was a kind of stiff cardboard or
millboard, within brown paper. Mr. Emblem laid it open. It was full of
folded papers. He took up the first and opened it. The paper was
blank. The next, it was blank; the third, it was blank; the fourth,
and fifth, and sixth, and so on throughout. The case, which had been
waiting so long, waiting for eighteen years, to be opened on Iris's
twenty-first birthday, was full of blank papers. They were all half
sheets of note-paper.

Mr. Emblem looked surprised at the first two or three papers; then he
turned pale; then he rushed at the rest. When he had opened all, he
stared about him with bewilderment.

"Where is the letter?" he asked again. Then he began with trembling
hands to tear out the contents of the safe and spread them upon the
table. The letter was nowhere.

"I am certain," he said, for the tenth time, "I am quite certain that
I tied up the letter with red tape, outside the packet. And no one has
been at the safe except me."

"Tell us," said Arnold, "the contents of the letter as well as you
remember them. Your son-in-law was known to you under the name of
Aglen, which was not his real name. Did he tell you his real name?"

"No."

"What did he tell you? Do you remember the letter?"

"I remember every word of the letter."

"If you dictate it, I will write it down. That may be a help."

Mr. Emblem began quickly, and as if he was afraid of forgetting:

"'When you read these lines, I shall be in the Silent Land, whither
Alice, my wife, has gone before me.'"

Then Mr. Emblem began to stammer.

"'In one small thing we deceived you, Alice and I. My name is not
Aglen'--is not Aglen--"

And here a strange thing happened. His memory failed him at this
point.

"Take time," said Arnold; "there is no hurry."

Mr. Emblem shook his head.

"I shall remember the rest to-morrow, perhaps," he said.

"Is there anything else you have to help us?" asked Arnold: "never
mind the letter, Mr. Emblem. No doubt that will come back presently.
You see we want to find out, first, who Iris's father really was, and
what is her real name. There was his coat-of-arms. That will connect
her with some family, though it may be a family with many branches."

"Yes--oh yes! his coat-of-arms. I have seen his signet-ring a dozen
times. Yes, his coat; yes, first and fourth, two roses and a boar's
head erect; second and third--I forget."

"Humph! Was there any one who knew him before he was married?"

"Yes, yes," Mr. Emblem sat up eagerly. "Yes, there is--there is; he is
my oldest customer. But I forget his name, I have forgotten
everything. Perhaps I shall get back my memory to-morrow. But I am
old. Perhaps it will never get back."

He leaned his head upon his hands, and stared about him with
bewildered eyes.

"I do not know, young man," he said presently, addressing Arnold, "who
you are. If you come from Mr. Chalker, let me tell you it is a day too
soon. To-morrow we will speak of business." Then he sprung to his feet
suddenly, struck with a thought which pierced him like a dagger.
"To-morrow! It is the day when they will come to sell me up. Oh, Iris!
what did that matter when you were safe? Now we are all paupers
together--all paupers."

He fell back in his chair white and trembling. Iris soothed him;
kissed his cheek and pressed his hand; but the terror and despair of
bankruptcy were upon him. This is an awful specter, which is ever
ready to appear before the man who has embarked his all in one
venture. A disastrous season, two or three unlucky ventures, a
succession of bad debts, and the grisly specter stands before them.
He had no terror for the old man so long as he thought that Iris was
safe. But now--

"Idle talk, Iris--idle talk, child," he said, when they tried to
comfort him. "How can a girl make money by teaching? Idle talk, young
man. How can money be made by painting? It's as bad a trade as
writing. How can money be made anyhow but in an honest shop? And
to-morrow I shall have no shop, and we shall all go into the street
together!"

Presently, when lamentations had yielded to despair, they persuaded
him to go to bed. It was past midnight. Iris went upstairs with him,
while Lala Roy and Arnold waited down below. And then Arnold made a
great discovery. He began to examine the folded papers which were in
the packet. I think he had some kind of vague idea that they might
contain secret and invisible writing. They were all sheets of
note-paper, of the same size, folded in the same way--namely, doubled
as if for a square envelope. On holding one to the light, he read the
water-mark:

HIEROGLYPHICA
A Vegetable Vellum.
M.S. & Co.

They all had the same water-mark. He showed the thing to the Hindoo,
who did not understand what it meant.

Then Iris came down again. Her grandfather was sleeping. Like a child,
he fell asleep the moment his head fell upon the pillow.

"Iris," he said, "this is no delusion of your grandfather's. The
parcel has been robbed."

"How do you know, Arnold?"

"The stupid fellow who stole and opened the packet no doubt thought he
was wonderfully clever to fill it up again with paper. But he forgot
that the packet has been lying for eighteen years in the safe, and
that this note-paper was made the day before yesterday."

"How do you know that?"

"You can tell by the look and feel of the paper; they did not make
paper like this twenty years ago; besides, look at the water-mark;" he
held it to the light, and Iris read the mystic words. "That is the
fashion of to-day. One house issues a new kind of paper, with a fancy
name, and another imitates them. To-morrow, I will ascertain exactly
when this paper was made."

"But who would steal it, Arnold? Who could steal it?"

"It would not probably be of the least use to any one. But it might be
stolen in order to sell it back. We may see an advertisement carefully
worded, guarded, or perhaps--Iris, who had access to the place, when
your grandfather was out?"

"No one but James, the shopman. He has been here five-and-twenty
years. He would not, surely, rob his old master. No one else comes
here except the customers and Cousin Joe."

"Joe is not, I believe, quite--"

"Joe is a very bad man. He has done dreadful things. But then, even if
Joe were bad enough to rob the safe, how could he get at it? My
grandfather never leaves it unlocked. Oh, Arnold, Arnold, that all
this trouble should fall upon us on the very day--"

"My dear, is it not better that it should fall upon you when I am
here, one more added to your advisers? If you have lost a fortune, I
have found one. Think that you have given it to me."

"Oh, the fortune may go," she said. "The future is ours, and we are
young. But who shall console my grandfather in his old age for his
bankruptcy?"

"As the stream," said Lala Roy, "which passeth from the mountains to
the ocean, kisseth every meadow on its way, yet tarries not in any
place, so Fortune visits the sons of men; she is unstable as the wind;
who shall hold her? Let not adversity tear off the wings of hope."

They could do nothing more. Arnold replaced the paper in the packet,
and gave it to Iris; they put back the ledgers and account-books in
the safe, and locked it up, and then they went upstairs.

"You shall go to bed, Iris," said Arnold, "and you, too, Lala Roy. I
shall stay here, in case Mr. Emblem should--should want anything."

He was, in reality, afraid that "something would happen" to the old
man. His sudden loss of memory, his loss of self-control when he spoke
of his bankruptcy, the confusion of his words, told clearly of a mind
unhinged. He could not go away and leave Iris with no better
protection than one other weak old man.

He remained, but Iris sat with him, and in the silent watches of the
night they talked about the future.

Under every roof are those who talk about the future, and those who
think about the past; so the shadow of death is always with us and the
sunshine of life. Not without reason is the Roman Catholic altar
incomplete without a bone of some dead man. As for the thing which had
been stolen, that affected them but little. What does it matter--the
loss of what was promised but five minutes since?

It was one o'clock in the morning when Lala Roy left them. They sat at
the window, hand-in-hand, and talked. The street below them was very
quiet; now and then a late cab broke the silence, or the tramp of a
policeman; but there were no other sounds. They sat in darkness
because they wanted no light. The hours sped too swiftly for them. At
five the day began to dawn.

"Iris," said Arnold, "leave me now, and try to sleep a little. Shall
we ever forget this night of sweet and tender talk?"

When she was gone, he began to be aware of footsteps overhead in the
old man's room. What was he going to do? Arnold waited at the door.
Presently the door opened, and he heard careful steps upon the stairs.
They were the steps of Mr. Emblem himself. He was fully dressed, with
his usual care and neatness, his black silk stock buckled behind, and
his white hair brushed.

"Ah, Mr. Arbuthnot," he said cheerfully, "you are early this morning!"
as if it was quite a usual thing for his friends to look in at six in
the morning.

"You are going down to the shop, Mr. Emblem?"

"Yes, certainly--to the shop. Pray come with me."

Arnold followed him.

"I have just remembered," said the old man, "that last night we did
not look on the floor. I will have one more search for the letter, and
then, if I cannot find it, I will write it all out--every word. There
is not much, to be sure, but the story is told without the names."

"Tell me the story, Mr. Emblem, while you remember it."

"All in good time, young man. Youth is impatient."

He drew up the blind and let in the morning light; then he began his
search for the letter on the floor, going on his hands and knees, and
peering under the table and chairs with a candle. At length he
desisted.

"I tied it up," he said, "with the parcel, with red tape. Very
well--we must do without it. Now, Mr. Arbuthnot, my plan is this.
First, I will dictate the letter. This will give you the outlines of
the story. Next, I will send you to--to my old customer, who can tell
you my son-in-law's real name. And then I will describe his
coat-of-arms. My memory was never so clear and good as I feel it
to-day. Strange that last night I seemed, for the moment, to forget
everything! Ha, ha! Ridiculous, wasn't it? I suppose--But there is no
accounting for these queer things. Perhaps I was disappointed to find
nothing in the packet. Do you think, Mr. Arbuthnot, that I--" Here he
began to tremble. "Do you think that I dreamed it all? Old men think
strange things. Perhaps--"

"Let us try to remember the letter, Mr. Emblem."

"Yes, yes--certainly--the letter. Why it went--ahem!--as follows--"

* * * * *

Arnold laid down the pen in despair. The poor old man was mad. He had
poured out the wildest farrago without sense, coherence, or story.

"So much for the letter, Mr. Arbuthnot." He was mad without doubt, yet
he knew Arnold, and knew, too, why he was in the house. "Ah, I knew it
would come back to me. Strange if it did not. Why I read that letter
once every quarter or so for eighteen years. It is a part of myself. I
could not forget it."

"And the name of your son-in-law's old friend?"

"Oh, yes, the name!"

He gave some name, which might have been the lost name, but as Mr.
Emblem changed it the next moment, and forgot it again the moment
after, it was doubtful; certainly not much to build upon.

"And the coat-of-arms?"

"We are getting on famously, are we not? The coat, sir, was as
follows."

He proceeded to describe an impossible coat--a coat which might have
been drawn by a man absolutely ignorant of science.

All this took a couple of hours. It was now eight o'clock.

"Thank you, Mr. Emblem," said Arnold. "I have no doubt now that we
shall somehow bring Iris to her own again, in spite of your loss.
Shall we go upstairs and have some breakfast?"

"It is all right, Iris," cried the old man gleefully. "It is all
right. I have remembered everything, and Mr. Arbuthnot will go out
presently and secure your inheritance."

Iris looked at Arnold.

"Yes, dear," she said. "You shall have your breakfast. And then you
shall tell me all about it when Arnold goes; and you will take a
holiday, won't you--because I am twenty-one to-day?"

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