Читать книгу The Hispaniola Plate (1683-1893) - John Bloundelle-Burton - Страница 6

"Gray's Inn Square, Oct. 20th, 1892.

"My Dear Sir,--In answer to your request, I beg to inform you that the terms by which you inherit 'Phips House,' at Strand-on-the-Green, from your late uncle, are as follows--the statement being taken from the last will and testament of your ancestor Nicholas Crafer, made in the year 1695:--

'And I do hereby will and bequeathe that ye house called Phips by me, after my late captain and commander, Sir William Phips, when I purchased yt from Mr. Clitherow of Branford, do forever remaine in the possession of some descendant of mine, male or female, the former for choyce and preference, yet not also debarring, in fault of any bearing the name of Crafer existinge, those descending from the female side to succeed. That is to saye, it is to so remaine forever unless through it whoever doth succeede shall thereinto find the means whereby to obtain unto themselves a fortune of and equivalint unto the summe of Fiftie thousand guineas, the which I do hereby testify the meanes are forthcoming. After whych the house may be disposed of as best beseemeth those who have so found ye fortune. This, therefore, I say, "Seeke and ye shall find, knocke and yt shall be opened unto you."'

"This will, in spite of its quaintness, has ever, and will probably always, hold good, although not law, until one thing occurs of two: either that the house falls down of old age (which it seemed very likely to do when I inspected it after your late uncle's decease) or that some descendant of Commander Nicholas Crafer shall find the means of making the fortune of 50,000 guineas in or through it--a most unlikely thing to happen. For, as you know, many generations of Crafers have searched through the house from basement to garret, imagining that the original testator meant to hint that somewhere about it, was hidden away such a sum of money as he mentions; and always without result. Nor has the ingenuity of one generation after another ever been able to hit upon any hidden meaning which might be contained in the words of the will, or to find anything excepting the scrap of paper once discovered, of which you know; while certainly the land on which it stands--something under three acres--can hardly ever become of such value, or one-twentieth part of it.

"But as you know as much about your ancestor as I can possibly tell you, I need not write further, and I have only to state that, during your absence abroad, everything has been done to facilitate handing over the house to you on your return, and I now propose to prove your uncle's will, and, after the usual formalities, to put you in possession of Phips House and other property left by him.--Yours faithfully,

"A. Bentham."

This was the letter which Reginald Crafer read at his breakfast, one fine autumn morning, as he sat in that good old hostelry, "The George," at Portsmouth--a letter which he had found at the Naval Club after his early morning walk on the Battery--a walk taken with the view of aiding an already exceedingly good appetite, and of having a look at the waves dancing out at the Nab and sparkling in the bright October sunshine.

A better specimen of the young lieutenant of to-day than Reginald Crafer (with "N" after his name to show that he had taken up navigation as his branch) you might not see in any of her Majesty's ships. Tall, but not too tall for a sailor; close-shaven, as becometh the young naval officer of to-day, yet with excellent features that required nothing in the shape of whiskers or moustache to set them off; with clear grey eyes and a wholesome sunburnt skin--what more could a young man desire in the shape of personal gifts? Nay, what more pleasing a sight to gaze upon than this smart, good-looking young officer could the heart of a maiden desire?

Now Reginald Crafer--whom at this present moment you see eating buttered toast and a fried sole, as he reads his lawyer's letter--had just come home from the China Station in the Ianthe (twin-screw cruiser, first-class, armoured, 8,400 tons); and she having been paid off, the young man was on leave for the time being. He had slept at "The George" overnight for two reasons (ordinarily the naval officer rushes to London by the first train that will bear him, when once he has set foot on shore), one being that he wanted to go to a ball at the Commander-in-Chief's to which the officers of the returned cruiser were mostly invited; the other, that he expected to find a letter from the solicitor, Mr. Bentham--which, as you have seen, he did find.

This letter was in reply to one that Reginald had sent to the lawyer from Hong Kong, which in its own turn had also been a reply. For to the young lieutenant there had come at the Station a letter from Mr.. Bentham, stating that his uncle--also a Reginald Crafer--was dead, that he had left the younger Reginald a few thousand pounds (the principal part of his income having been derived from an annuity and a government pension) and "Phips House." Then Reginald had written back for further details, had received the above-quoted answer at the Naval Club this morning, and--voilà tout!

Of course, he knew as much about the mysterious entailment of Phips House as the lawyer did; it would have been strange had he not done so. Eleven different Crafers had held possession of it since Nicholas departed this life in King William III.'s reign: eleven different Crafers, all of whom had sought high and low for the fortune it was supposed to contain, or for some clue as to how the fortune of "Fiftie thousand guineas" was to be obtained; and of those Crafers many had torn their hair in vexation, and others had stamped their feet and cursed and sworn--or, perhaps I had better say, grumbled and growled--at finding nothing. Of such irate descendants the last, the late lamented Reginald, had, however, not been one. Perhaps because he thought that if his ten predecessors could find no fortune in the house, he was not likely to do so; or perhaps because he was himself very comfortably off with his annuity and his pension from a Government office, and his few thousands of invested money--which Lieutenant Crafer now came into--he bothered his head not at all about the chimera of the house at Strand-on-the-Green. Certainly he cursed not over it, neither did he swear--unless it was at the damp from the river!--and, being bald, he had no hair to tear; and he never tapped panels nor prodded walls nor looked for secret doors in the house, contenting himself with letting young "Reg" do all this when he came to stay with him. For the rest, and being a bachelor, he spent much time at his club; he took a faint interest in the curiosity which the legend of Phips House excited in the minds of his friends, as well as of the waterside loafers of Brentford, Kew, Mortlake, and all the immediate neighbourhood; he would even go so far as to invite people to stay with him and hunt about the house for themselves, when they were not enjoying the prospect from the windows of the market-gardens across the river. But of excitement in the legendary fortune, this bald-headed and comfortably situated ex-Civil Servant could get up not one jot; and when a burglar broke into the house, determined on finding, as he informed the barrister who defended him, "the blooming fortune if it was to be found," he went to see him at Pentonville after his trial and told him he sincerely wished he had found it. Thus, to him, the fortune of Phips House was but an allegory or a myth, which he regarded but as a grown-up child regards a fairy-tale; and so, unbelieving in all that pertained to it, he passed away to Kensal Green and Reginald the Second ruled in his stead.

But he, when he was a child--being of a romantic nature--did believe in the fortune of Nicholas Crafer; and when he was a man--being a sailor--had not lost all faith in the romance.

Whether that faith was justified, you who read on shall see.