'None of that!' the old man retorted sharply, with a sudden look of alarm. 'I would not leave you alone with that book at this moment for all the shillings I have taken! So if you want water you've got to get it.'
'I am better now,' Mr. Fishwick answered. But the sweat that stood on his brow went far to belie his words. 'I--yes, I think I'll take an extract. Sixty-one, was he?'
'Eighty-one, eighty-one, it says. There's pen and ink, but you'll please to give me five shillings before you write. Thank you kindly. Lord save us, but that is not the one. You're taking out the one above it.'
'I'll have 'em all--for identification,' Mr. Fishwick replied, wiping his forehead nervously.
'Sho! You have no need.'
'I think I will.'
'What, all?'
'Well, the one before and the one after.'
'Dods! man, but that will be fifteen shillings!' the clerk cried, aghast at such extravagance.
'You'll only charge for the entry I want?' the lawyer said with an effort.
'Well--we'll say five shillings for the other two.'
Mr. Fishwick closed with the offer, and with a hand which was still unsteady paid the money and extracted the entries. Then he took his hat, and hurriedly, his eyes averted, turned to go.
'If it's money,' the old clerk said, staring at him as if he could never satisfy his inquisitiveness, 'you'll not forget me?'
'If it's money,' Mr. Fishwick said with a ghastly smile, 'it shall be some in your pocket.'
'Thank you kindly. Thank you kindly, sir! Now who would ha' thought when you stepped in here you were stepping into fortune, so to speak?'
'Just so,' Mr. Fishwick answered, a spasm distorting his face. 'Who'd have thought it? Good morning!'
'And good-luck!' the clerk bawled after him. 'Good-luck!'
Mr. Fishwick fluttered a hand backward, but made no answer. His first object was to escape from the court; this done, he plunged through a stream of traffic, and having covered his trail, went on rapidly, seeking a quiet corner. He found one in a square among some warehouses, and standing, pulled out the copy he had made from the register. It was neither on the first nor the second entry, however, that his eyes dwelled, while the hand that held the paper shook as with the ague. It was the third fascinated him:--
'_September 19th,_' it ran, '_at the Bee in Steep Street, Julia, daughter of Anthony and Julia Soane of Estcombe, aged three, and buried the 21st of the month_.'
Mr. Fishwick read it thrice, his lips quivering; then he slowly drew from a separate pocket a little sheaf of papers, frayed at the corners, and soiled with much and loving handling. He selected from these a slip; it was one of those which Mr. Thomasson had surprised on the table in the room at the Castle Inn. It was a copy of the attestation of birth 'of Julia, daughter of Anthony Soane, of Estcombe, England, and Julie his wife'; the date, August, 1747; the place, Dunquerque.
The Attorney drew a long quivering breath, and put the papers up again, the packet in the place from which he had taken it, the extract from the Bristol register in another pocket. Then, after drawing one or two more sighs as if his heart were going out of him, he looked dismally upwards as in protest against heaven. At length he turned and went back to the thoroughfare, and there, with a strangely humble air, asked a passer-by the nearest way to Steep Street.
The man directed him; the place was near at hand. In two minutes Mr. Fishwick found himself at the door of a small but decent grocer's shop, over the portal of which a gilded bee seemed to prognosticate more business than the fact performed. An elderly woman, stout and comfortable-looking, was behind the counter. Eyeing the attorney as he came forward, she asked him what she could do for him, and before he could answer reached for the snuff canister.
He took the hint, requested an ounce of the best Scotch and Havannah mixed, and while she weighed it, asked her how long she had lived there.
'Twenty-six years, sir,' she answered heartily, 'Old Style. For the New, I don't hold with it nor them that meddle with things above them. I am sure it brought me no profit,' she continued, rubbing her nose. 'I have buried a good husband and two children since they gave it us!'
'Still, I suppose people died Old Style?' the lawyer ventured.
'Well, well, may be.'
'There was a death in this house seventeen years gone this September,' he said, 'if I remember rightly.'
The woman pushed away the snuff and stared at him. 'Two, for the matter of that,' she said sharply. 'But should I remember you?'
'No.'
'Then, if I may make so bold, what is't to you?' she retorted. 'Do you come from Jim Masterson?'
'He is dead,' Mr. Fishwick answered.
She threw up her hands. 'Lord! And he a young man, so to speak! Poor Jim! Poor Jim! It is ten years and more--ay, more--since I heard from him. And the child? Is that dead too?'
'No, the child is alive,' the lawyer answered, speaking at a venture, 'I am here on her behalf, to make some inquiries about her kinsfolk.'
The woman's honest red face softened and grew motherly. 'You may inquire,' she said, 'you'll learn no more than I can tell you. There is no one left that's kin to her. The father was a poor Frenchman, a monsieur that taught the quality about here; the mother was one of his people--she came from Canterbury, where I am told there are French and to spare. But according to her account she had no kin left. He died the year after the child was born, and she came to lodge with me, and lived by teaching, as he had; but 'twas a poor livelihood, you may say, and when she sickened, she died--just as a candle goes out.'
'When?' Mr. Fishwick asked, his eyes glued to the woman's face.
'The week Jim Masterson came to see us bringing the child from foreign parts--that was buried with her. 'Twas said his child took the fever from her and got its death that way. But I don't know. I don't know. It is true they had not brought in the New Style then; but--'
'You knew him before? Masterson, I mean?'
'Why, he had courted me!' was the good-tempered answer. 'You don't know much if you don't know that. Then my good man came along and I liked him better, and Jim went into service and married Oxfordshire way. But when he came to Bristol after his journey in foreign parts, 'twas natural he should come to see me; and my husband, who was always easy, would keep him a day or two--more's the pity, for in twenty-four hours the child he had with him began to sicken, and died. And never was man in such a taking, though he swore the child was not his, but one he had adopted to serve a gentleman in trouble; and because his wife had none. Any way, it was buried along with my lodger, and nothing would serve but he must adopt the child she had left. It seemed ordained-like, they being of an age, and all. And I had two children to care for, and was looking for another that never came; and the mother had left no more than buried her with a little help. So he took it with him, and we heard from him once or twice, how it fared, and that his wife took to it, and the like; and then--well, writing's a burden. But,' with renewed interest, 'she's a well-grown girl by now, I guess?'
'Yes,' the attorney answered absently, 'she--she's a well-grown girl.'
'And is poor Jim's wife alive?'
'Yes.'
'Ah,' the good woman answered, looking thoughtfully into the street.' If she were not--I'd think about taking to the girl myself. It's lonely at times without chick or child. And there's the shop to tend. She could help with that.'
The attorney winced. He was looking ill; wretchedly ill.