The Master Craftsman

Tea was served in the room on the other side of the Hall. Like the study, this room was a lovely old room also, completely wainscoted with cedar. There were the same carvings over the mantel—fruit, flowers, grapes, leaves and branches, and the shield with the family coat-of-arms. The room was, however, lighter than the study, partly because it contained in each of the upper panels family portraits, and on the panels below oil-paintings representing the river as seen from the boat-yard, with its ships, barges, hoys, lighters, boats, and all the life and motion and business of the river in the last century. So little regard for art was there in the family that no one knew who had painted these panels. Yet it was no mean hand which had designed and executed them. Many indications pointed to the daily occupancy of the room by the household. In the window, for instance, stood a small table, with a work-basket placed there out of the way. There was a sideboard—period, the second George—of mahogany, black with age. It was one of the kind consisting of two square towers, each with a locked door and two compartments within, and a broad, flat connecting-piece with a drawer. In the middle portion stood a noble old punch-bowl, surrounded by glasses—lovely old glasses: the convivial rummer, the useful tumbler, the tall champagne glass, the old-fashioned little port glass, the tiny liqueur glass—a beautiful assortment such as a mere modern cannot understand. On one side of the towers stood a glass filled with spring flowers; and on the other, as if belonging to the masculine sex, a case for spirits. On the panels above the pictures was a row of plates; they had stood there for a hundred years, only taken down from time to time to be dusted. On the other side of the room, opposite to the door, was a cottage piano, open, with music piled on the top. In one corner, near the fireplace, was a little stack of churchwarden pipes; and in the other corner was a door, half open, which revealed a surprising cupboard. The eighteenth-century housewife demanded so many store-rooms for all her jams, jellies, pickles, wines, cordials, and strong waters; so many still-rooms, linen-rooms, and pantries for the immense collections which her family wanted for the successful conduct of a household, that it became necessary to have a cupboard in the parlour, or general living-room, as well. This cupboard belonged to the Burnikels of the last century; but its use was continued by the present occupants. Here were kept the cups and saucers, old and new; here was the plate-basket, containing the forks and spoons in daily use—silver, not plated, and thin with age; here were certain books of devotion which once formed the family library—they were those referred to by Robert; here were tea-caddy, coffee-caddy, and sugar-basin; here were the decanters which belonged to the Sunday dinner; here were household account-books; here was the corkscrew; here were mysterious phials; here were kept the marking ink, the writing ink, the pens and paper; here was the current pot of jam; here were the lemons; here, in short, the thousand and one things likely to be wanted every day by the household. For this room was the family keeping or living-room; it was not the dining-room or the breakfast-room: it was the parlour. Robert’s room had been the best parlour until he changed it into the study.

One did not take in all these details at once; but I had abundant opportunities afterwards of noting everything. Meantime, what I observed first of all was that ‘tea’ meant sitting down to a table covered with a white cloth, spread with a magnificent display of good things. I remembered my cousin’s ominous words: ‘I told them that you might come in to tea.’ ‘They’ had provided this square meal in hospitality for me.

The girl who sat behind the tea-tray, ready to serve, was doubtless the housekeeper, accountant, secretary, clerk, whom my cousin was some day going to marry. A slight, delicate-looking girl she appeared to be; and she seemed shy, her head drooping. Beside her stood, supported by a stick, an elderly man.

‘This is Captain Dering,’ said my cousin, introducing his friend, ‘and this is Isabel Dering.’

The girl bowed stiffly. The Captain extended a friendly hand.

‘Glad to make your acquaintance, sir,’ he said heartily. ‘There was a time when I made new friends every voyage, but those times are over. The sight of a stranger at Wapping is a rare event, I assure you.’

‘Especially,’ I said, ‘a stranger who comes in search of a long-lost cousin.’

The face and dress and general appearance of this old gentleman indicated his profession. It was nautical.

‘My tough old figure-head,’ they all cried aloud together, ‘tells you that I am a sailor, though retired. My clear, honest eyes tell you that I am a sailor. My red and weather-beaten cheek; my blue cloth; the shape of my jacket—all proclaim that I am a sailor—and proud of it, sir, proud of it.’

Then Robert Burnikel, to my confusion, because I thought the custom, over a cup of tea, long exploded, pronounced a grace. It was an old family grace, dating from the time when all respectable families of the middle class were extremely religious, and the Church of England was evangelical, and when ladies conversed and wrote letters to each other, almost entirely on the condition of their souls. Quite a long collect, this grace was. Yet the utterance was as purely formal as that of grace in a College Hall, or grace in a workhouse, which is the most formal thing I know. Robert pronounced that grace mechanically.

This form of prayer concluded, we all sat down. A tremendous tea was on the table: ham in slices, boiled eggs, potted tongue, prawns, bread-and-butter, cakes of many kinds, including plum-cake, seed-cake, Madeira-cake, tea-cake (which is a buttered or bilious variety), short-cake, biscuits, jam, marmalade, and honey. A hospitable tea. A square tea, in fact. A tea, like Robert Burnikel himself, at once serious and earnest and heavy.

As a rule, I repeat, I take nothing with my afternoon tea. But one must not be churlish. My cousin glanced at me before the prayer, as if to say, ‘You shall see for yourself how Wapping can do it.’ And I was expected to do justice to all these good things provided in my honour. Why, if this splendid spread was put on the table every day, the Captain’s clear eye would become yellow, and the Master would find it no longer possible to follow out an argument, for the black spots, lines, and circles which would be bobbing about between his nose and the printed page. It must have been an exceptional spread. No one could live through a month of such teas. I avoided the ham, and escaped the eggs, and declined the shrimps. But I went in for the cakes, and on the whole acquitted myself, I believe, creditably. The Captain and the giver of the feast, on their parts, ploughed their way resolutely through the whole array of dishes. When the first pangs were appeased, the Captain spoke.

‘Sir George Burnikel,’ he said, with solemnity, ‘I commanded the Maid of Athens, which ran between Calicut and Ceylon, for many years. As the captain of that noble vessel I’ve taken passengers abroad of the highest rank—the very highest—not to speak of coffee-planters. Not that their rank made them better sailors. I acknowledge so much. But it made me a respecter of the British aristocracy, Sir George Burnikel, of which you are a worthy member. Robert here is all for pulling down. Why? I ask you humbly, Sir George—why?’

Robert grunted.

‘Why? I ask. When you break up an old ship she’s gone. Don’t break her up. Let her be. Let her go on till she’s wrecked or cast away. No, sir, when you’ve carried noblemen upon the Indian Ocean, and found out that they are exactly like other people—must be stroked the right way; want the most comfortable berths; drink the same grog, and talk the same language—then you get to respect the aristocracy. Because, you see, with their chances, they might have been so very different. And then you ask, Why pull down? Why sweep away?’ He addressed the question to Robert, who only grunted. It was obviously an old subject of dispute.

Then the Captain turned to the table again, and proceeded to work through the festive spread in silence.

The lagging of conversation enabled me to look about and observe. To observe in a strange house is to make discoveries. First, I regarded the girl at the tea-tray. She was rather pretty, I thought; too pale, as if she took too little exercise, or worked too hard, or was underfed; she had curiously soft and limpid eyes—of the kind which seem to hold within them unknown depths of something—wisdom, perhaps; love, perhaps; prophecy, perhaps—according to the lover’s interpretation. Her features were regular, but not of classical outline; her cheek looked soft as velvet; her lips were mobile. But she was too grave; she looked sad, even. I remembered what my cousin said: ‘No fondling and nonsense.’ At twenty-four one has not a large experience, but I certainly could not help thinking that she was a girl designed and intended by Nature to live upon love, and the fondlings and caresses and outward signs of love, which her fiancé thought so ridiculous. To have none! To wait for ten, twelve, fifteen years, and to lack that consolation and comfort! Poor child! Poor Isabel!

And then I made another discovery. The girl was afraid of her cousin—the Master—the man who would not permit his own mother to entertain any illusions about the mastery. She was afraid of her own fiancé; she watched him anxiously; she anticipated his wants in silence; he received her attentions without acknowledgment. Why was she afraid of him? Did he scold and abuse his secretary?

My host, I perceived, conducted his eating with the resolution and the rapidity that becomes habitual when one sits down to eat and not to talk. As I learned afterwards, there was little conversation at the table in this house, because the master was always full of his own thoughts, and despised the common topics of the day and the season. Perceiving, when he had himself finished a very substantial stop-gap between dinner and supper, that his guest had also ceased taking in provisions, he rose abruptly, pushing back his chair and his plate. One may remark this thing done daily in the cottage and in the village. It is an action which seems to belong to a level lower than that of a master boat-builder. One might have expected more attention to style; but, as I learned afterwards, in a house where one man rules absolute, like Nero of Rome, and nobody dares to expostulate, some deterioration of manners is apt to creep in.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘if you won’t take any more tea-cake? a few shrimps? an egg? No? Then, we’ll go and have another talk. Isabel, you needn’t come in.’

The Captain took no notice of our departure. I bowed to the girl, who looked a little surprised at this act of courtesy, and rather stiffly inclined her head.

Outside the door Robert Burnikel stopped. ‘Upstairs,’ he said, ‘I think there is something to interest you. Come along.’ On the second-floor he threw open the door of a room. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is called the spare-room. But I never remember that it was occupied. We could do without it, I suppose; and we never had any visitors to stay the night. So, you see, it is only half furnished.’ The room contained a wooden bed with mattresses, but no feather-bed, or spring-bed, or curtains—only the frame; there were three or four odd chairs standing about, and there was a great sailor’s chest. ‘This,’ he explained, ‘is the bed of old John Burnikel, the man who had the bag of diamonds.’

‘Oh, it is a pity we haven’t got the bag as well, isn’t it? Did your great-grandfather buy it?’

‘I suspect there was no buying. He was on the spot and he took it—bed and sea-chest and all. I suppose he thought that perhaps, in spite of their failures to find it, the bag might be somewhere about the bed.’

‘And he searched, of course?’

‘I believe this bed must have been taken to pieces a hundred times. My brother and I once took it to pieces and tapped every piece all over with a hammer to see if it was hollow. Look! Here is the secret cupboard in which people used to hide their things.’ It was at the head of the bed. He pressed a certain spot in the woodwork and a door flew open, disclosing a small recess. ‘Everybody knew the secret, but everybody pretended not to know. Of course, when the old man was gone, the first thing they did was to look into this secret cupboard. But there was nothing there. Then they turned the house inside out. Then they quarrelled and fought. Then they dissolved partnership.’

‘And then,’ I added, ‘they accused each other, for three generations after, of stealing that bag. It’s a wonderful family story. Let me try.’

I put in my hand and felt round the little cupboard. There was nothing.

‘And this,’ my cousin went on, ‘is the old man’s sea-chest. That, too, was brought here at the same time as the bed. The two things, except for a table and a chair and a frying-pan, were all the furniture the old man possessed. It’s a most marvellous thing to think of. What became of that bag? A hundred times and more that old bed has been pulled to pieces and that old chest has been turned out, to see if there was any hiding-place still undiscovered.’

A large, iron-bound sea-chest. I threw open the lid. It seemed to contain a queer lot of useless rubbish.

‘The sight of this box,’ said Robert, ‘makes one believe that there really must have been a bag of diamonds, after all.’

‘Of course there was. The only thing is—what became of it? Nobody knew anything about it. Nobody was in the house from the time that the old man was taken ill until his nephews came; no outsider stole that bag. What became of it, then? Of course, it is no good asking now. Still, it is mysterious!’

‘Yes. And about ninety years ago the two cousins were standing over the dead man’s bed, just as we are doing now. I feel as if it was yesterday.’

‘Don’t accuse me,’ I said, ‘of stealing the thing, or there will be another fight.’

Robert smiled grimly. Were there to be another fight, he was perfectly assured about the event. A very superior young man in every direction. I noted the smile and understood it. But it was all part of the very singular and masterful personality to which I was thus singularly introduced.

By this time I was fully impressed with the fact that I had to deal with a very remarkable, resolute, and ambitious young man, who cared about nothing in the world but his own advancement; strong and able, masterful, self-confident even to the very rare degree of communicating his secret ambitions. Most men, again, limit their ambitions by the circumstances and the conditions of their lives; they do not look much beyond. The ambition of the average working man is to get continuous work; sometimes to become a master; the ambition of the average young shopkeeper is to extend his business; the young solicitor hopes for a steady practice; the young author hopes for acceptance by the editor—only acceptance, only a chance; he has no thought at first of great world-wide success; his ambition increases as he gets on. In Robert’s case the ambition was from the outset full-grown. ‘I will go into the House,’ he said, being only a boat-builder with a small yard and a moderate business, ‘and I will become a Cabinet Minister.’ Such ambition was immense, presumptuous, audacious, considering his position. And yet, considering the man, apart from his position, I recognised almost from the outset that it was not ridiculous.