‘Mr. Beeton! Mr. Beeton! Where the deuce is my pistol?’
‘Quick, he’s going to shoot himself—’avin’ gone mad!’ said Mrs. Beeton.
Mr. Beeton addressed Dick soothingly, but it was some time before the latter, threshing up and down his bedroom, could realise the intention of the promises to ‘find everything to-morrow, sir.’
‘Oh, you copper-nosed old fool—you impotent Academician!’ he shouted at last. ‘Do you suppose I want to shoot myself? Take the pistol in your silly shaking hand then. If you touch it, it will go off, because it’s loaded. It’s among my campaign-kit somewhere—in the parcel at the bottom of the trunk.’
Long ago Dick had carefully possessed himself of a forty-pound weight field-equipment constructed by the knowledge of his own experience. It was this put-away treasure that he was trying to find and rehandle. Mr. Beeton whipped the revolver out of its place on the top of the package, and Dick drove his hand among the khaki coat and breeches, the blue cloth leg-bands, and the heavy flannel shirts doubled over a pair of swan-neck spurs. Under these and the water-bottle lay a sketch-book and a pigskin case of stationery.
‘These we don’t want; you can have them, Mr. Beeton. Everything else I’ll keep. Pack ’em on the top right-hand side of my trunk. When you’ve done that come into the studio with your wife. I want you both. Wait a minute; get me a pen and a sheet of notepaper.’
It is not an easy thing to write when you cannot see, and Dick had particular reasons for wishing that his work should be clear. So he began, following his right hand with his left: ‘“The badness of this writing is because I am blind and cannot see my pen.” H’mph!—even a lawyer can’t mistake that. It must be signed, I suppose, but it needn’t be witnessed. Now an inch lower—why did I never learn to use a type-writer?—“This is the last will and testament of me, Richard Heldar. I am in sound bodily and mental health, and there is no previous will to revoke.”—That’s all right. Damn the pen! Whereabouts on the paper was I?—“I leave everything that I possess in the world, including four thousand pounds, and two thousand seven hundred and twenty eight pounds held for me”—oh, I can’t get this straight.’ He tore off half the sheet and began again with the caution about the handwriting. Then: ‘I leave all the money I possess in the world to’—here followed Maisie’s name, and the names of the two banks that held the money.
‘It mayn’t be quite regular, but no one has a shadow of a right to dispute it, and I’ve given Maisie’s address. Come in, Mr. Beeton. This is my signature; I want you and your wife to witness it. Thanks. To-morrow you must take me to the landlord and I’ll pay forfeit for leaving without notice, and I’ll lodge this paper with him in case anything happens while I’m away. Now we’re going to light up the studio stove. Stay with me, and give me my papers as I want ’em.’
No one knows until he has tried how fine a blaze a year’s accumulation of bills, letters, and dockets can make. Dick stuffed into the stove every document in the studio—saving only three unopened letters; destroyed sketch-books, rough note-books, new and half-finished canvases alike.
‘What a lot of rubbish a tenant gets about him if he stays long enough in one place, to be sure,’ said Mr. Beeton, at last.
‘He does. Is there anything more left?’ Dick felt round the walls.
‘Not a thing, and the stove’s nigh red-hot.’
‘Excellent, and you’ve lost about a thousand pounds’ worth of sketches. Ho! ho! Quite a thousand pounds’ worth, if I can remember what I used to be.’
‘Yes, sir,’ politely. Mr. Beeton was quite sure that Dick had gone mad, otherwise he would have never parted with his excellent furniture for a song. The canvas things took up storage room and were much better out of the way.
There remained only to leave the little will in safe hands: that could not be accomplished to to-morrow. Dick groped about the floor picking up the last pieces of paper, assured himself again and again that there remained no written word or sign of his past life in drawer or desk, and sat down before the stove till the fire died out and the contracting iron cracked in the silence of the night.
▲▲▲
Chapter XV
With a heart of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander;
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
With a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney—
Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end,
Methinks it is no journey.
—Tom a’ Bedlam’s Song.
‘Good-bye, Bess; I promised you fifty. Here’s a hundred—all that I got for my furniture from Beeton. That will keep you in pretty frocks for some time. You’ve been a good little girl, all things considered, but you’ve given me and Torpenhow a fair amount of trouble.’
‘Give Mr. Torpenhow my love if you see him, won’t you?’
‘Of course I will, dear. Now take me up the gang-plank and into the cabin. Once aboard the lugger and the maid is—and I am free, I mean.’
‘Who’ll look after you on this ship?’
‘The head-steward, if there’s any use in money. The doctor when we come to Port Said, if I know anything of P. and O. doctors. After that, the Lord will provide, as He used to do.’
Bess found Dick his cabin in the wild turmoil of a ship full of leavetakers and weeping relatives. Then he kissed her, and laid himself down in his bunk until the decks should be clear. He who had taken so long to move about his own darkened rooms well understood the geography of a ship, and the necessity of seeing to his own comforts was as wine to him. Before the screw began to thrash the ship along the Docks he had been introduced to the head-steward, had royally tipped him, secured a good place at table, opened out his baggage, and settled himself down with joy in the cabin. It was scarcely necessary to feel his way as he moved about, for he knew everything so well. Then God was very kind: a deep sleep of weariness came upon him just as he would have thought of Maisie, and he slept till the steamer had cleared the mouth of the Thames and was lifting to the pulse of the Channel.
The rattle of the engines, the reek of oil and paint, and a very familiar sound in the next cabin roused him to his new inheritance.
‘Oh, it’s good to be alive again!’ He yawned, stretched himself vigorously, and went on deck to be told that they were almost abreast of the lights of Brighton. This is no more open water than Trafalgal Square is a common; the free levels begin at Ushant; but none the less Dick could feel the healing of the sea at work upon him already. A boisterous little cross-swell swung the steamer disrespectfully by the nose; and one wave breaking far aft spattered the quarterdeck and the pile of new deck-chairs. He heard the foam fall with the clash of broken glass, was stung in the face by a cupful, and sniffing luxuriously, felt his way to the smoking-room by the wheel. There a strong breeze found him, blew his cap off and left him bareheaded in the doorway, and the smoking-room steward, understanding that he was a voyager of experience, said that the weather would be stiff in the chops off the Channel and more than half a gale in the Bay. These things fell as they were foretold, and Dick enjoyed himself to the utmost. It is allowable and even necessary at sea to lay firm hold upon tables, stanchions, and ropes in moving from place to place. On land the man who feels with his hands is patently blind. At sea even a blind man who is not sea-sick can jest with the doctor over the weakness of his fellows. Dick told the doctor many tales—and these are coin of more value than silver if properly handled—smoked with him till unholy hours of the night, and so won his short-lived regard that he promised Dick a few hours of his time when they came to Port Said.