The Master Craftsman

In these days of self-restraint we neither weep nor rage; we pour out neither lamentations nor curses. People used formerly to accept evil fortune with all the outward indications that the bolt of fortune had gone home.

When a young man of the old days lost his fortune, or his mistress, or both, I believe that he thought no scorn to let his wailings or his curses be heard by all the world. In these days the young man walks to his club—perhaps it will be his last appearance there—dines as usual with his everyday face and his smile for a friend, and presently goes home.

I am but a child of my generation; therefore I did this, and at ten o’clock or so I returned to my chambers.

Outside the door I found, to my astonishment, waiting for me, a man whose appearance was not familiar to me. Perhaps a man with a little bill; but, then, I owed no man anything to speak of. Besides, ten o’clock is late for the man with the little bill. Perhaps someone from the stables; but, then, it was late for a messenger from the stables. The man was young, tall, and well set up; dressed well enough, but hardly with the stamp of to-day’s Piccadilly.

‘Are you Sir George Burnikel?’ the man asked bluntly, without taking off his hat or touching the brim in the way common with servitors and messengers.

‘I believe I am. But I do not seem to know you.’

‘May I have ten minutes’ conversation with you?’

‘Certainly not, unless I know who you are and what you want. So, my friend, as ten o’clock at night is not the most usual time for a call, perhaps you will go away and write your business.’

‘I have come a good step,’ he persisted, ‘and I have waited for two hours. If you could see me to-night, Sir George, I should be very much obliged.’

‘Who are you, then?’

‘My name is Robert Burnikel. I am a cousin of yours.’

‘Never heard that I had any cousin of that name, I assure you.’

‘I am a distant cousin. I do not want to beg or to borrow money of you, I assure you. I came in the hope that you would listen to me, and perhaps give me some advice in a matter of the greatest importance to myself. By trade I am a boat-builder; I carry on the same business, in the same place, that your great-grandfather did before he quarrelled with his partner and left Wapping.’

After such an introduction I had no more hesitation, but I turned the key and threw open the door. ‘Come in,’ I said; ‘I am sure it’s all right. The hereditary calling of our family is boat-building. The head of the family should always be a boat-builder. Come in.’ I led the way into the study, and touched the switch of the light. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘if you like to sit down and talk I will listen. There are soda-water bottles and the usual accessories on the table, with cigarettes.’

My visitor declined the proffered hospitality. Now that he had taken off his hat and was sitting under the bright electric light, the cousin appeared at first to be merely a good-looking young man with a certain roughness of manner as of dress. But as I looked at him, I became gradually aware that this young man was most curiously like myself. I have broad shoulders, but his were broader; I am tolerably tall, but he was taller; my head is pretty large, but his was larger; my forehead is square, but his was squarer; my nose is straight, but his was straighter. Even his hair was the same, and that grew in short, strong brown curls all over his head—the kind of hair that is never found decorating the skull of an ordinary weak-kneed Christian. The hair of Mr. Feeblemind and Mr. Ready-to-halt is invariably straight; therefore I have always been pleased to have stubbly, curly hair. His voice, too, was like my own, only stronger and fuller. To complete the resemblance, I had the short, broad fingers of a workman. These fingers force a man to buy a lathe; they never gave me any peace until I had got the lathe. My visitor had exactly the same hand, but it was larger. Strange, that upon so many generations a resemblance between two cousins should be so strong.

Mr. Robert Burnikel took a chair and cleared his throat. ‘It is a personal matter,’ he said, ‘and it is somewhat difficult to begin.’

‘Looks like borrowing money, after all,’ I thought. ‘If I may suggest,’ I said, ‘tell me something of the family history. It is ninety years since the connection of my branch with yours was broken off. I am, I regret to say, shamefully ignorant of my own people.’

‘Well, Sir George, there was a boat-builder at Wapping died about the year 1780. He wasn’t the first of the boat-builders by a hundred years and more; you will find his tomb—one of the fine square tombs—on the south side of Wapping Church. This shows that he was a man of substance and responsibility. The churchyard is full of Burnikels. If you think it worth while to be proud of such a thing, you belong to the oldest and most respectable family of Wapping.’

‘Of course one likes to feel that one has respectable ancestors.’

‘That old man, who died at the age of eighty-five, was great-great-grandfather to both of us.’

‘I see. Our cousinship starts a hundred years ago. It hath a venerable aspect.’

‘He left two sons at least. Those two sons carried on the business in partnership until they died or retired. Then two of their sons—I don’t know anything about the rest—took it over as partners. They quarrelled; I dare say you have heard why’—he looked up quickly and paused—‘and they dissolved partnership. One came to this end of the town, and became a builder; the other stayed at Wapping, and his son, and his grandson, and his great-grandson—that’s myself—have conducted that business ever since. I am now the sole owner of the concern.’

‘It is rather bewildering at first. One would like it in black and white, though I never understood genealogical tables. However, the point is, that your branch of our family has remained at Wapping, carrying on the old business, all these years. I fear there has been no intercourse between the two main currents of the stock.’

‘None, I believe. But we were able to follow the fortunes of your branch.’

‘There were other offshoots, I suppose—tributary streams, cadet branches—with you as with us?’

‘Yes; some of us are in Australia; some are in Canada; some are in New Zealand; some are boat-builders; some of us are farmers; some of us are sailors; we are scattered all over the world.’

‘And none of you rich?’

‘None of us are rich. Your great-grandfather, though he called himself a builder, of course had no necessity to work.’

‘No necessity to work? Why not?’

‘Why, on account of his immense wealth.’

‘Wealth? He had very little. Although, as to work, he was a most industrious person. He stamped his stucco image all over Kensington; he has become a name; he points architectural epigrams; he is the hero of the Burnikel age in this suburb. But he made very little money. Where did you get your notion of his enormous wealth?’

‘Well——’ The cousin looked doubtful, but for the moment he evaded the point. ‘Then one of his sons became a lawyer; and so, of course, his father being so rich——’

‘Again you are misinformed. My great-grandfather left a moderate fortune, and my grandfather had his share of it, and no more.’

‘We always understood, to be sure, that your grandfather, being so rich, was able to buy his place as Judge and his title.’

At this amazing theory, I jumped in my chair and sat upright. ‘Good Lord, man!’ I cried, ‘where were you—where could you be—brought up? Where do they still preserve prejudices pre—pre—pre-mediæval?’

‘I was born and brought up in Wapping.’

‘Can remote Wapping be such a God-forsaken country as to believe that Judges buy their seats? Are you so incredibly ignorant as to believe that?’

‘I don’t know.’ He coloured. ‘Perhaps we were wrong. They said so. I never questioned it; I never really thought about it. My grandmother used to tell us so.’

‘Your grandmother! Permit me to say, newly-found cousin, that my respect for the Wapping grandmother begins to totter. My grandfather was made Judge for the usual reason—that he was a very great lawyer.’

‘He died worth a quarter of a million.’

‘Well, and why the deuce should he not? If you make from five to ten thousand a year by your practice, and only spend one, and go on doing that for thirty years, and get five per cent. all the time for your money, you will find yourself worth all that at the end of the time. But why are you telling me all this stuff about my own people? Have you got something up your sleeve? Have it out, man.’

‘Well, Sir George, the story of that bag of diamonds and things has never been forgotten. It rankled down to my own time. My father used to grow gloomy when business was bad and he thought of the diamonds.’

‘What had that to do with my grandfather?’

‘And the fortune that the Judge was reported to have left behind him—a quarter of a million—was exactly the value that old John Burnikel set upon the diamonds that your great-grandfather took.’

‘My great-grandfather took? Man, you’ve got a bee in your bonnet. It was not that much-injured old man, but your great-grandfather—yours—who, I always understood, took the jewels.’

The cousin laughed gently, but shook his head.

‘That was the story they told you, of course. Why, it is nearly a hundred years ago, and we have always been quite narrow in our means, working hard, living carefully, and spending little—never a rich man among us. Those of us who were not in the business went to sea; not a single man died rich.’

‘Then,’ I said, ‘you must have buried the precious diamonds. My great-grandfather left no more than a few thousands to his children, and my grandfather had great difficulty in keeping himself until his practice began and increased.’

‘Well, they always told me——’

‘If you come to that, they always told me——’

‘If the bag was not taken by your great-grandfather, who could have taken it?’

‘Yours, my dear sir—yours.’

‘For no one knew of its existence except those two and the old man John Burnikel. And they found him dying and the bag gone. Not dead, or the bag might have been stolen by someone else; but sick and dying, and it was gone.’

‘Well, Mr. Burnikel, you are a stranger to me, and I think I will not discuss any farther the delicate question as to who stole a bag ninety years ago. My ancestor certainly did not, and I do not wish to accuse your ancestor. Perhaps the bag was stowed away somewhere: in a bank; in a merchant’s strong-room——’

‘He was only a simple sailor. He knew nothing about banks or strong-rooms.’

‘The person who took it—not necessarily your ancestor, and certainly not mine—put it somewhere, and died without revealing the secret. If you come to think of it, a bag of diamonds into which you dipped whenever you wanted to sell one was rather a dangerous kind of thing to keep. Boat-builders, as a rule, do not keep bags of diamonds lying loose. It is somewhere hidden away in your back-garden, perhaps.’

‘Not ours.’

‘Or perhaps there never was any bag of diamonds at all.’

‘Oh yes, there was. We’ve got the old sailor’s bed at home with the secret hiding-place at the head, and his chest brass-bound——’

‘The empty chest proves the existence of the treasure, I suppose. However, that’s enough about the bag of diamonds. You have not told me why you came here to-night. Not, I take it, to talk over the Legend of the Lost Treasure.’

‘Well, Sir George, I thought to myself, we’ve always talked so much about that bag of diamonds, that if I mentioned the thing, there would be, perhaps, a feeling—a kind of sympathy—you to have all and me to have nothing. As it is, I can’t understand what you say. I suppose we have been all wrong.’

‘Let us acknowledge this bond—the common bond of a long ago common loss. And next?’

‘The reason why I came here this evening is this. You know the world, and I do not. I want your advice. It is this way. I mean to rise in the world. Wapping is all very well—what there is of it. But, after all, it is not everything.’

‘Not everything, I suppose.’

‘It is, in fact, only a corner of the world. I mean to get out of it.’

‘Very good. Why not?’

‘I see everywhere men no better than myself—not so good—working men, getting distinction on the School Board and on the County Council, and even’—he gasped—‘even Elsewhere,’ he said, with a kind of awe. ‘And I don’t see why I should not get on too.’

‘Why not?—why not? If you like the kind of work.’

‘In short, Sir George—you will not laugh at me—I mean to go into the House.’

‘Why should I laugh at you? And why should you not go into the House if you want to, and if a constituency will send you there?’

‘I will show you afterwards, if you like, on another occasion, my chances and my fitness.’

‘To-night you will explain to me where I come in—why you come to me. I am the worst person in the world to advise.’

‘I do not ask advice about my own intentions,’ said the political candidate stiffly. ‘I advise myself. I am going into the House. What I want you to tell me is this—I have no means at Wapping of finding out how one sets to work in the first instance, how you let people know that you are going to stand, how you find a borough, what it costs, and all the rest of it. If you can give or get for me this information, Sir George, it is all that I shall ask you, and I shall be extremely obliged to you.’

‘I can’t give it, but I can get it for you, I dare say. At all events, I will try.’

‘That is very kind of you. Let me once get it’—the man’s eyes flashed—‘and I will succeed. I am an able man, Sir George—I am not boasting; I am stating a plain fact—I am a very able man, and I shall get on. You shall see. You shall not be ashamed to own your cousin. I shall rise.’

He did rise, perhaps to illustrate his prophecy. He got up and took his hat.

‘I know exactly what I want,’ said this confident young man—yet the arrogance of his words was tempered by a certain modesty of utterance—‘and I know how to get it. But I must get into the House first. I’ve planned it all out. It takes time to make one’s way. In five years’ time—I only ask five years—I shall be Home Secretary.’

‘What?’

‘Home Secretary,’ he repeated calmly. ‘Nothing less than that to begin with.’

‘Oh, nothing less than that!’

‘After that I don’t say, nor do I even think. Why, there are a dozen men now in the House who have gone in like me in order to get distinction. I read the debates, and I see how these men get on. And I understand their secret, which is open to all. I’m not going to join any party. I shall be an Independent member, and I shall rise by my own exertions and my own abilities.’

I remembered that afternoon’s dream about myself. Good heavens! And here was this man—of my own name, of my own age, so much like myself, this cousin—coming to me with exactly the ambition desired for me by Lady Frances! Was this man who called himself a boat-builder—perhaps in some allegorical sense—really myself? The builder of a boat might be the builder of a man. Was this cousin my own nobler self, the complete and fully-developed George?

‘I should like,’ my visitor continued, ‘to show you that I am not an empty boaster. Let me call again. Or perhaps you would wish to see the place that you came from. Come to Wapping to see me. The yard is not a bit changed. It is just what it was two hundred years ago when the first Burnikel came to the place. Come at any time; I am always there.’

‘Thank you. I will call upon you to-morrow afternoon. Good-night; and, I say, when you have nothing better to do, dig up the back-garden, and find that precious bag. It may help to pay your election expenses.’

He departed. I remained strangely disturbed. After all the events of the day—the loss of fortune, the fatal absence of ambition—to meet this man—arrogant, presumptuous, ignorant. Home Secretary to begin with! A tradesman of the East End! And yet—yet there was something in the calm confidence of the man, and in the look of strength. But—Home Secretary to begin with!