Erema - My Father's Sin, Richard Doddridge Blackmore [read me a book TXT] 📗

London; "no sport to be had out of him. Why, he stared at me when I said 'Rosamond Street,' and made me stick on 'Clerkenwell.' Now here he is taking us down Snow Hill, when he should have been crossing Smithfield. Smithfield, cabby, Smithfield!"

"Certain, Sir, Smiffle, if you gives the order;" and he turned the poor horse again, and took us up the hill, and among a great number of barriers. "No thoroughfare," "No thoroughfare," on all hands stretched across us; but the cabman threaded his way between, till he came to the brink of a precipice. The horse seemed quite ready, like a Roman, to leap down it, seeing nothing less desirable than his present mode of life, till a man with a pickaxe stopped him.

"What are you at?" cried the Major, with fury equalled by nothing except his fright. "Erema, untie my big rattan. Quick--quick--"

"Captain," said the cabman, coolly, "I must have another shilling for this job. A hextra mile and a quarter, to your orders. You knows Lunnon so much better. Smiffle stopped--new railway--new meat market--never heered of that now, did you?"

"You scoundrel, drive straight to the nearest police office."

"Must jump this little ditch, then, Captain. Five pun' fine for you, when we gets there. Hold on inside, old gentleman. Kuck, kuck, Bob, you was a hunter once. It ain't more than fifty feet deep, my boy."

"Turn round! turn round, I tell you! turn round! If your neck is forfeit, you rogue, mine is not. I never was so taken in in my life!" Major Hockin continued to rave, and amid many jeers we retreated humbly, and the driver looked in at us with a gentle grin. "And I thought he was so soft, you know! Erema, may I swear at him?"

"On no account," I said. "Why, after all, it is only a shilling, and the loss of time. And then, you can always reflect that you have discharged, as you say, a public duty, by protesting against a vile system."

"Protesting is very well, when it pays," the Major answered, gloomily; "but to pay for protesting is another pair of shoes."

This made him cross, and he grew quite fierce when the cabman smote him for eight-pence more. "Four parcels on the roof, Captain," he said, looking as only a cabman can look at his money, and spinning his extra shilling. "Twopence each under new hact, you know. Scarcely thought a hofficer would 'a tried evasion."

"You consummate scoundrel--and you dress yourself like a countryman! I'll have your badge indorsed--I'll have your license marked. Erema, pay the thief; it is more than I can do."

"Captain, your address, if you please; I shall summon you for scurrilous language, as the hact directs. Ah, you do right to be driven to a pawn shop."

Triumphantly he drove off, while the Major cried, "Never tie up my rattan again. Oh, it was Mrs. Hockin, was it? What a fool I was not to stop on my own manor!"

"I pray you to disdain such low impudence," I said, for I could not bear to see him shake like that, and grieved to have brought him into it. "You have beaten fifty of them--a hundred of them--I have heard you say."

"Certainly I have, my dear; but I had no Bruntsea then, and could not afford to pay the rogues. That makes me feel it so bitterly, so loftily, and so righteously. To be treated like this, when I think of all my labors for the benefit of the rascally human race! my Institute, my Lyceum, my Mutual Improvement Association, and Christian Young Men's something. There is no institution, after all, to be compared to the tread-mill."

Recovering himself with this fine conclusion, he led me down a little sloping alley, scarcely wide enough for a wheelbarrow, to an old black door, where we set down our parcels; for he had taken his, while I carried mine, and not knowing what might happen yet, like a true peace-maker I stuck to the sheaf of umbrellas and the rattan cane. And thankful I was, and so might be the cabman, to have that weapon nicely sheathed with silk.

Major Hockin's breath was short, through too much talking without action, and he waited for a minute at this door, to come back to his equanimity. And I thought that our female breath falls short for the very opposite reason--when we do too much and talk too little; which happily seldom happens.

He was not long in coming back to his usual sprightliness and decision. And it was no small relief to me, who was looking at him miserably, and longing that his wife was there, through that very sad one-and-eightpence, when he pulled out a key, which he always carried as signer and lord of Bruntsea, the key of the town-hall, which had survived lock, door, and walls by centuries, and therewith struck a door which must have reminded that key of its fine old youth.

Before he had knocked so very many times, the door was opened by a young man wearing an apron and a brown paper cap, who knew Major Hockin at once, and showed us up stairs to a long low workshop. Here were many wheels and plates and cylinders revolving by energy of a strap which came through the floor and went through the ceiling. And the young man told us to be careful how we walked, for fear of getting entangled. Several men, wearing paper caps and aprons of leather or baize, were sitting doing dextrous work, no doubt, and doing it very easily, and the master of them all was hissing over some fine touch of jewel as a groom does at a horse. Then seeing us, he dropped his holders, and threw a leather upon his large lens, and came and took us to a little side room.

"Are you not afraid to leave them?" asked the Major. "They may secrete some gems, Mr. Handkin."

"Never," said the lapidary, with some pride. "I could trust these men with the Koh-i-noor; which we could have done better, I believe, than it was done by the Hollanders. But we don't get the chance to do much in diamonds, through the old superstition about Amsterdam, and so on. No, no; the only thing I can't trust my men about is to work as hard when I am away as when I am there. And now, Sir, what can I do for you? Any more Bruntsea pebbles? The last were not worth the cutting."

"So you said; but I did not think so. We have some agates as good as any from Aberystwith or Perthshire. But what I want now is to open this case. It must be done quite privately, for a most particular reason. It does open, doesn't it? I am sure it does."

"Certainly it opens," Mr. Handkin answered, while I trembled with anxiety as he lightly felt it round the edges with fingers engrained with corundum. "I could open it in one instant, but the enamel might fly. Will you risk it?"

The Major looked at me, and I said, "Oh no; please not to risk any thing, if any slower process will do it without risk. We want it done without injury."

"Then it will cost a good bit," he replied. "I can open it for five shillings, if you run the risk; if that rests with me, I must charge five pounds."

"Say three," cried the Major. "Well, then, say four guineas: I have a lot of work in store for you."

"I never overcharge, and I never depart from my figures," the lapidary answered. "There is only one other man in London who knows the secret of this enamel, and he is my brother. They never make such enamel now. The art is lost, like that of the French paste of a hundred years ago, which almost puzzles even me until I go behind it. I will give you my brother's address if you like; but instead of five pounds, he will charge you ten guineas--if it must be done in private. Without that condition, I can do it for two pounds. You wish to know why that should make such a difference. Well, for this simple reason: to make sure of the job, it must be done by daylight; it can be done only in my chief work-room; if no one is to see what I am about (and my men have sharp eyes, I can tell you), all my hands must be sacked for the afternoon, but not without their wages. That alone would go far toward the difference, and then there is the dropping of the jobs in hand, and waste of power, and so on. I have asked you too little, Major Hockin, I assure you; but having said, I will stick to it, although I would much rather you would let me off."

"I have known you for many years," the Major answered--"ever since you were a boy, with a flat box, working at our Cornish opals. You would have done a lot of work for five pounds then. But I never knew you overcharge for any thing. We agree to your terms, and are obliged to you. But you guarantee no damage?"

"I will open this locket, take out its contents, whatever they may be, and reclose it so that the maker, if still alive--which is not very probable--should not know that it had been meddled with."

"Very well; that is exactly what we want; for I have an idea about it which I may try to go on with afterward. And for that it is essential to have no symptom that it ever has been opened. What are these brilliants worth, Mr. Handkin?"

"Well, Sir, in the trade, about a hundred and fifty, though I dare say they cost three hundred. And the portrait is worth another hundred, if I find on the back the marks I expect."

"You do not mean to say that you know the artist?" I could not help exclaiming, though determined not to speak. "Oh, then, we shall find out every thing!"

"Erema, you are a--well, you are a silly!" Major Hockin exclaimed, and then colored with remembering that rather he should have let my lapse pass. But the lapidary seemed to pay no attention, only to be calling down to some one far below. "Now mind what you say," the Major whispered to me, just as if he were the essence of discretion.

"The work-room is clear now," Mr. Handkin said; "the fellows were delighted to get their afternoon. Now you see that I have to take off this hoop, and there lies the difficulty. I could have taken out the gold back, as I said, with very little trouble, by simply cutting it. But the locket would never have been quite the same, though we put a new back; and, more than that, the pressure of the tool might flaw the enamel, or even crack the portrait, for the make of this thing is peculiar. Now first I submit the rim or verge, without touching the brilliants, mind you, to the action of a little preparation of my own--a gentle but penetrative solvent. You are welcome to watch me; you will be none the wiser; you are not in the trade, though the young lady looks as if she would make a good polisher. Very well: if this were an ordinary closure, with two flat surfaces meeting, the solvent would be absorbed into the adhesion, expansion would take place, and there we have it. But this is what we call a cyme-joint, a cohesion of two