CHAPTER II.
THE HUT ON THE HEATH
"I'm glad it's all over," said the footman, waving a cigar stolen from the box of his master. "Funerals don't suit me."
"Yet we must all 'ave one of our own some day," said the cook, who was plainly under the influence of gin; "an' that pore Miss Sophy--me 'art bleeds for 'er!"
"An' she with 'er millions," growled a red-faced coachman. "Wot rot!"
"Come now, John, you know Miss Sophy was fond of her father"--this from a sprightly housemaid, who was trimming a hat.
"I dunno why," said John. "Master was as cold as ice, an' as silent as 'arf a dozen graves."
The scullery-maid shuddered, and spread out her grimy hands.
"Oh, Mr. John, don't talk of graves, please! I've 'ad the nightmare over 'em."
"Don't put on airs an' make out as 'ow you've got nerves, Cammelliar," put in the cook tearfully. "It's me as 'as 'em--I've a bundle of 'em--real shivers. Ah, well! we're cut down like green bay-trees, to be sure. Pass that bottle, Mr. Thomas."
This discussion took place in the kitchen of the Moat House. The heiress and Miss Parsh, the housekeeper, had departed for the seaside immediately after the funeral, and in the absence of control, the domestics were making merry. To be sure, Mr. Marlow's old and trusted servant, Joe Brill, had been told off to keep them in order, but just at present his grief was greater than his sense of duty. He was busy now sorting papers in the library--hence the domestic chaos.
It was, in truth, a cheerful kitchen, more especially at the present moment, with the noonday sun streaming in through the open casements. A vast apartment with a vast fireplace of the baronial hall kind; brown oaken walls and raftered roof; snow-white dresser and huge deal table, and a floor of shining white tiles.
There was a moment's silence after the last unanswerable observation of the cook. It was broken by a voice at the open door--a voice which boomed like the drone of a bumble-bee.
"Peace be unto this house," said the voice richly, "and plenty be its portion."
The women screeched, the men swore--since the funeral their nerves had not been quite in order--and all eyes turned towards the door. There, in the hot sunshine, stood an enormously fat old man, clothed in black, and perspiring profusely. It was, in fact, none other than Cicero Gramp, come in the guise of Autolycus to pick up news and unconsidered trifles. He smiled benignly, and raised his fat hand.
"Peace, maid-servants and men-servants," said he, after the manner of Chadband. "There is no need for alarm. I am a stranger, and you must take me in."
"Who the devil are you?" queried the coachman.
"We want no tramps here," growled the footman.
"I am no tramp," said Cicero mildly, stepping into the kitchen. "I am a professor of elocution and eloquence, and a friend of your late master's. He went up in the world, I dropped down. Now I come to him for assistance, and I find him occupying the narrow house; yes, my friends, Dick Marlow is as low as the worms whose prey he soon will be. Pax vobiscum!"
"Calls master 'Dick,'" said the footman.
"Sez 'e's an old friend," murmured the cook.
They looked at each other, and the thought in every mind was the same. The servants were one and all anxious to hear the genesis of their late master, who had dropped into the Moat House, as from the skies, some five years before. Mrs. Crammer, the cook, rose to the occasion with a curtsy.
"I'm sure, sir, I'm sorry the master ain't here to see you," she said, polishing a chair with her apron. "But as you says--or as I take it you means--'e's gone where we must all go. Take a seat, sir, and I'll tell Joe, who's in the library."
"Joe--my old friend Joe!" said Cicero, sitting down like a mountain. "Ah! the faithful fellow!"
This random remark brought forth information, which was Cicero's intention in making it.
"Faithful!" growled the coachman, "an' why not? Joe Brill was paid higher nor any of us, he was; just as of living all his life with an iceberg deserved it!"
"Poor Dick was an iceberg!" sighed Cicero pensively. "A cold, secretive man."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Crammer, wiping her eye, "you may well say that. He 'ad secrets, I'm sure, and guilty ones, too!"
"We all have our skeletons, ma'am. But would you mind giving me something to eat and to drink? for I have walked a long way. I am too poor," said Cicero, with a sweet smile, "to ride, as in the days of my infancy, but spero meliora."
"Talking about skeletons, sir," said the footman when Mr. Gramp's jaws were fully occupied, "what about the master's?"
"Ah!" said Gramp profoundly. "What indeed!"
"But whatever it is, it has to do with the West Indies," said the man.
"Lor'!" exclaimed the housemaid, "and how do you know that, Mr. Thomas?"
"From observation, Jane, my dear," Thomas smiled loftily. "A week or two afore master had the fit as took him, I brought in a letter with the West Indy stamp. He turned white as chalk when he saw it, and tore it open afore I could get out of the room. I 'ad to fetch a glass of whisky. He was struck all of a 'eap--gaspin', faintin', and cussin' orful."
"Did he show it to Miss Sophy?" asked Mrs. Crammer.
"Not as I knows of. He kept his business to hisself," replied Thomas.
Gramp was taking in all this with greedy ear's.
"Ha!" he said, "when you took in the letter, might you have looked at the postmark, my friend?"
With an access of color, the footman admitted that he had been curious enough to do so.
"And the postmark was Kingston, Jamaica," said he.
"It recalls my youth," said Cicero. "Ah! they were happy, happy days!"
"What was Mr. Marlow, sir?"
"A planter of--of--rice," hazarded Gramp. He knew that there were planters in the West Indies, but he was not quite sure what it was they planted. "Rice--acres of it!"
"Well, he didn't make his money out of that, sir," growled the coachman.
"No, he did not," admitted the professor of elocution. "He acquired his millions in Mashonaland--the Ophir of the Jews."
This last piece of knowledge had been acquired from Slack, the schoolmaster.
"He was precious careful not to part with none of it," said the footman.
"Except to Dr. Warrender," said the cook. "The doctor was always screwing money out of him. Not that it was so much 'im as 'is wife. I can't abear that doctor's wife--a stuck-up peacock, I call her. She fairly ruined her husband in clothes. Miss Sophy didn't like her, neither."
"Dick's child!" cried Gramp, who had by this time procured a cigar from the footman. "Ah! is little Sophy still alive?"
He lighted the cigar and puffed luxuriously.
"Still alive!" echoed Mrs. Crammer, "and as pretty as a picture. Dark 'air, dark eyes--not a bit like 'er father."
"No," said Cicero, grasping the idea. "Dick was fair when we were boys. I heard rumors that little Sophy was engaged--let me see--to a Mr. Thorold."
"Alan Thorold, Esquire," corrected the coachman gruffly; "one of the oldest families hereabouts, as lives at the Abbey farm. He's gone with her to the seaside."
"To the seaside? Not to Brighton?"
"Nothin' of the sort--to Bournemouth, if you know where that is."
"I know some things, my friend," said Cicero mildly.