IT was baking-day in the establishment of Mr. Andrew Treverton when the messenger intrusted with Doctor Chennery’s letter found his way to the garden door of the cottage at Bayswater. After he had rung three times, he heard a gruff voice, on the other side of the wall, roaring at him to let the bell alone, and asking who he was, and what the devil he wanted.
“A letter for Mr. Treverton,” said the messenger, nervously backing away from the door while he spoke.
“Chuck it over the wall, then, and be off with you!” answered the gruff voice.
The messenger obeyed both injunctions, he was a meek, modest, elderly man; and when Nature mixed up the ingredients of his disposition, the capability of resenting injuries was not among them.
The man with the gruff voice — or, to put it in plainer terms, the man Shrowl — picked up the letter, weighed it in his hand, looked at the address on it with an expression of contemptuous curiosity in his bull-terrier eyes, put it in his waistcoat pocket, and walked around lazily to the kitchen entrance of the cottage.
In the apartment which would probably have been called the pantry, if the house had belonged to civilized tenants, a hand-mill had been set up; and, at the moment when Shrowl made his way to this room, Mr. Treverton was engaged in asserting his independence of all the millers in England by grinding his own corn. He paused irritably in turning the handle of the mill when his servant appeared at the door.
“What do you come here for?” he asked. “When the flour’s ready, I’ll call for you. Don’t let’s look at each other oftener than we can help! I never set eyes on you, Shrowl, but I ask myself whether, in the whole range of creation, there is any animal as ugly as man? I saw a cat this morning on the garden wall, and there wasn’t a single point in which you would bear comparison with him. The cat’s eyes were clear — yours are muddy. The cat’s nose was straight — yours is crooked. The cat’s whiskers were clean — yours are dirty. The cat’s coat fitted him — yours hangs about you like a sack. I tell you again, Shrowl, the species to which you (and I) belong is the ugliest on the whole face of creation. Don’t let us revolt each other by keeping in company any longer. Go away, you last, worst, infirmest freak of Nature — go away!”
Shrowl listened to this complimentary address with an aspect of surly serenity. When it had come to an end, he took the letter from his waistcoat pocket, without condescending to make any reply. He was, by this time, too thoroughly conscious of his own power over his master to attach the smallest importance to anything Mr. Treverton might say to him.
“Now you’ve done your talking, suppose you take a look at that” said Shrowl, dropping the letter carelessly on a deal table by his master’s side. “It isn’t often that people trouble themselves to send letters to you — is it? I wonder whether your niece has took a fancy to write to you? It was put in the papers the other day that she’d got a son and heir. Open the letter, and see if it’s an invitation to the christening. The company would be sure to want your smiling face at the table to make ’em jolly. Just let me take a grind at the mill, while you go out and get a silver mug. The son and heir expects a mug you know, and his nurse expects half a guinea, and his mamma expects all your fortune. What a pleasure to make the three innocent creeturs happy! It’s shocking to see you pulling wry faces, like that, over the letter. Lord! lord! where can all your natural affection have gone to? — ”
“If I only knew where to lay my hand on a gag, I’d cram it into your infernal mouth!” cried Mr. Treverton. “How dare you talk to me about my niece? You wretch! you know I hate her for her mother’s sake. What do you mean by harping perpetually on my fortune? Sooner than leave it to the play-actress’s child, I’d even leave it to you; and sooner than leave it to you, I would take every farthing of it out in a boat, and bury it forever at the bottom of the sea!” Venting his dissatisfaction in these strong terms, Mr. Treverton snatched up Doctor Chennery’s letter, and tore it open in a humor which by no means promised favorably for the success of the vicar’s application.
He read the letter with an ominous scowl on his face, which grew darker and darker as he got nearer and nearer to the end. When he came to the signature his humor changed, and he laughed sardonically. “Faithfully yours, Robert Chennery,” he repeated to himself “Yes! faithfully mine, if I humor your whim. And what if I don’t, parson?” He paused, and looked at the letter again, the scowl re-appealing on his face as he did so. “There’s a lie of some kind lurking about under these lines of fair writing,” he muttered suspiciously. “I am not one of his congregation: the law gives him no privilege of imposing on me. What does he mean by making the attempt?” He stopped again, reflected a little, looked up suddenly at Shrowl, and said to him,
“Have you lit the oven fire yet?”
“No, I hav’n’t,” answered Shrowl.
Mr. Treverton examined the letter for the third time — hesitated — then slowly tore it in half and tossed the two pieces over contemptuously to his servant.
“Light the fire at once,” he said. “And, if you want paper, there it is for you. Stop!” he added, after Shrowl had picked up the torn letter. “If anybody comes here to-morrow morning to ask for an answer, tell them I gave you the letter to light the fire with, and say that’s the answer.” With those words Mr. Treverton returned to the mill, and began to grind at it again, with a grin of malicious satisfaction on his haggard face.
Shrowl withdrew into the kitchen, closed the door, and, placing the torn pieces of the letter together on the dresser, applied himself, with the coolest deliberation, to the business of reading it. When he had gone slowly and carefully through it, from the address at the beginning to the name at the end, he scratched reflectively for a little while at his ragged beard, then folded the letter up carefully and put it in his pocket.
“I’ll have another look at it later in the day,” he thought to himself, tearing off a piece of an old newspaper to light the fire with. “It strikes me, just at present, that there may be better things done with this letter than burning it.”
Resolutely abstaining from taking the letter out of his pocket again until all the duties of the household for that day had been duly performed, Shrowl lit the fire, occupied the morning in making and baking the bread, and patiently took his turn afterward at digging in the kitchen garden. It was four o’clock in the afternoon before he felt himself at liberty to think of his private affairs, and to venture on retiring into solitude with the object of secretly looking over the letter once more.
A second perusal of Doctor Chennery’s unlucky application to Mr. Treverton helped to confirm Shrowl in his resolution not to destroy the letter. With great pains and perseverance, and much incidental scratching at his beard, he contrived to make himself master of three distinct points in it, which stood out, in his estimation, as possessing prominent and serious importance.
The first point which he contrived to establish clearly in his mind was that the person who signed the name of Robert Chennery was desirous of examining a plan, or printed account, of the north side of the interior of a certain old house in Cornwall, called Porthgenna Tower. The second point appeared to resolve itself into this, that Robert Chennery believed some such plan or printed account might be found among the collection of books belonging to Mr. Treverton. The third point was that this same Robert Chennery would receive the loan of the plan or printed account as one of the greatest favors that could be conferred on him. Meditating on the latter fact, with an eye exclusively fixed on the contemplation of his own interests, Shrowl arrived at the conclusion that it might be well worth his while, in a pecuniary point of view, to try if he could not privately place himself in a position to oblige Robert Chennery by searching in secret among his master’s books. “It might be worth a five-pound note to me, if I managed it well,” thought Shrowl, putting the letter back in his pocket again, and ascending the stairs thoughtfully to the lumber-rooms at the top of the house.
These rooms were two in number, were entirely unfurnished, and were littered all over with the rare collection of books which had once adorned the library at Porthgenna Tower. Covered with dust, and scattered in all directions and positions over the floor, lay hundreds and hundreds of volumes, cast out of their packing-cases as coals are cast out of their sacks into a cellar. Ancient books, which students would have treasured as priceless, lay in chaotic equality of neglect side by side with modern publications whose chief merit was the beauty of the binding by which they were inclosed. Into this wilderness of scattered volumes Shrowl now wandered, fortified by the supreme self-possession of ignorance, to search resolutely for one particular book, with no other light to direct him than the faint glimmer of the two guiding words — Porthgenna Tower. Having got them firmly fixed in his mind, his next object was to search until he found them printed on the first page of any one of the hundr............