The Plattner Story and Others Read online

  THE LOST INHERITANCE

  "My uncle," said the man with the glass eye, "was what you might calla hemi-semi-demi millionaire. He was worth about a hundred and twentythousand. Quite. And he left me all his money."

  I glanced at the shiny sleeve of his coat, and my eye travelled up tothe frayed collar.

  "Every penny," said the man with the glass eye, and I caught the activepupil looking at me with a touch of offence.

  "I've never had any windfalls like that," I said, trying to speakenviously and propitiate him.

  "Even a legacy isn't always a blessing," he remarked with a sigh, andwith an air of philosophical resignation he put the red nose and thewiry moustache into his tankard for a space.

  "Perhaps not," I said.

  "He was an author, you see, and he wrote a lot of books."

  "Indeed!"

  "That was the trouble of it all." He stared at me with the availableeye to see if I grasped his statement, then averted his face a littleand produced a toothpick.

  "You see," he said, smacking his lips after a pause, "it was like this.He was my uncle--my maternal uncle. And he had--what shall I callit?--a weakness for writing edifying literature. Weakness is hardlythe word--downright mania is nearer the mark. He'd been librarian in aPolytechnic, and as soon as the money came to him he began to indulgehis ambition. It's a simply extraordinary and incomprehensible thingto me. Here was a man of thirty-seven suddenly dropped into a perfectpile of gold, and he didn't go--not a day's bust on it. One would thinka chap would go and get himself dressed a bit decent--say a couple ofdozen pairs of trousers at a West End tailor's; but he never did. You'dhardly believe it, but when he died he hadn't even a gold watch. Itseems wrong for people like that to have money. All he did was just totake a house, and order in pretty nearly five tons of books and ink andpaper, and set to writing edifying literature as hard as ever he couldwrite. I _can't_ understand it! But he did. The money came to him,curiously enough, through a maternal uncle of _his_, unexpected like,when he was seven-and-thirty. My mother, it happened, was his onlyrelation in the wide, wide world, except some second cousins of his.And I was her only son. You follow all that? The second cousins had oneonly son, too, but they brought him to see the old man too soon. He wasrather a spoilt youngster, was this son of theirs, and directly he seteyes on my uncle, he began bawling out as hard as he could. 'Take 'imaway--er,' he says, 'take 'im away,' and so did for himself entirely.It was pretty straight sailing, you'd think, for me, eh? And my mother,being a sensible, careful woman, settled the business in her own mindlong before he did.

  "He was a curious little chap, was my uncle, as I remember him. Idon't wonder at the kid being scared. Hair, just like these Japanesedolls they sell, black and straight and stiff all round the brim andnone in the middle, and below, a whitish kind of face and ratherlarge dark grey eyes moving about behind his spectacles. He used toattach a great deal of importance to dress, and always wore a flappingovercoat and a big-brimmed felt hat of a most extraordinary size. Helooked a rummy little beggar, I can tell you. Indoors it was, as arule, a dirty red flannel dressing-gown and a black skull-cap he had.That black skull-cap made him look like the portraits of all kinds ofcelebrated people. He was always moving about from house to house,was my uncle, with his chair which had belonged to Savage Landor, andhis two writing-tables, one of Carlyle's and the other of Shelley's,so the dealer told him, and the completest portable reference libraryin England, he said he had--and he lugged the whole caravan, now to ahouse at Down, near Darwin's old place, then to Reigate, near Meredith,then off to Haslemere, then back to Chelsea for a bit, and then up toHampstead. He knew there was something wrong with his stuff, but henever knew there was anything wrong with his brains. It was always theair, or the water, or the altitude, or some tommy-rot like that. 'Somuch depends on environment,' he used to say, and stare at you hard, asif he half suspected you were hiding a grin at him somewhere under yourface. 'So much depends on environment to a sensitive mind like mine.'

  "What was his name? You wouldn't know it if I told you. He wrotenothing that anyone has ever read--nothing. No one _could_ read it.He wanted to be a great teacher, he said, and he didn't know what hewanted to teach any more than a child. So he just blethered at largeabout Truth and Righteousness, and the Spirit of History, and allthat. Book after book he wrote and published at his own expense. Hewasn't quite right in his head, you know, really; and to hear him goon at the critics--not because they slated him, mind you--he likedthat--but because they didn't take any notice of him at all. 'Whatdo the nations want?' he would ask, holding out his brown old claw.'Why, teaching--guidance! They are scattered upon the hills like sheepwithout a shepherd. There is War and Rumours of War, the unlaid Spiritof Discord abroad in the land, Nihilism, Vivisection, Vaccination,Drunkenness, Penury, Want, Socialistic Error, Selfish Capital! Doyou see the clouds, Ted?'--My name, you know--'Do you see the cloudslowering over the land? and behind it all--the Mongol waits!' Hewas always very great on Mongols and the Spectre of Socialism, andsuch-like things.

  "Then out would come his finger at me, and with his eyes all afire andhis skull-cap askew, he would whisper: 'And here am I. What do I want?Nations to teach. Nations! I say it with all modesty, Ted, I _could_. Iwould guide them; nay! but I _will_ guide them to a safe haven, to theland of Righteousness, flowing with milk and honey.'

  "That's how he used to go on. Ramble, rave about the nations, andrighteousness, and that kind of thing. Kind of mincemeat of Bible andblethers. From fourteen up to three-and-twenty, when I might havebeen improving my mind, my mother used to wash me and brush my hair(at least in the earlier years of it), with a nice parting down themiddle, and take me, once or twice a week, to hear this old lunaticjabber about things he had read of in the morning papers, trying to doit as much like Carlyle as he could, and I used to sit according toinstructions, and look intelligent and nice, and pretend to be takingit all in. Afterwards I used to go of my own free will, out of a regardfor the legacy. I was the only person that used to go and see him.He wrote, I believe, to every man who made the slightest stir in theworld, sending him a copy or so of his books, and inviting him to comeand talk about the nations to him; but half of them didn't answer,and none ever came. And when the girl let you in--she was an artfulbit of goods, that girl--there were heaps of letters on the hall-seatwaiting to go off, addressed to Prince Bismark, the President of theUnited States, and such-like people. And one went up the staircaseand along the cobwebby passage,--the housekeeper drank like fury, andhis passages were always cobwebby,--and found him at last, with booksturned down all over the room, and heaps of torn paper on the floor,and telegrams and newspapers littered about, and empty coffee-cups andhalf-eaten bits of toast on the desk and the mantel. You'd see his backhumped up, and his hair would be sticking out quite straight betweenthe collar of that dressing-gown thing and the edge of the skull-cap.

  "'A moment!' he would say. 'A moment!' over his shoulder. 'The _motjuste_, you know, Ted, _le mot juste_. Righteous thought righteouslyexpressed--Aah!--concatenation. And now, Ted,' he'd say, spinning roundin his study chair, 'how's Young England?' That was his silly name forme.

  "Well, that was my uncle, and that was how he talked--to me, atanyrate. With others about he seemed a bit shy. And he not only talkedto me, but he gave me his books, books of six hundred pages or so,with cock-eyed headings, 'The Shrieking Sisterhood,' 'The Behemoth ofBigotry,' 'Crucibles and Cullenders,' and so on. All very strong, andnone of them original. The very last time but one that I saw him hegave me a book. He was feeling ill even then, and his hand shook and hewas despondent. I noticed it because I was naturally on the look-outfor those little symptoms. 'My last book, Ted,' he said. 'My last book,my boy; my last word to the deaf and hardened nations;' and I'm hangedif a tear didn't go rolling down his yellow old cheek. He was regularcrying because it was so nearly over, and he hadn't only written aboutfifty-three books of rubbish. 'I've sometimes thought, Ted'--he said,and stopped.

  "'Perhaps I've been a
bit hasty and angry with this stiff-neckedgeneration. A little more sweetness, perhaps, and a little lessblinding light. I've sometimes thought--I might have swayed them. ButI've done my best, Ted.'

  "And then, with a burst, for the first and last time in his lifehe owned himself a failure. It showed he was really ill. He seemedto think for a minute, and then he spoke quietly and low, as saneand sober as I am now. 'I've been a fool, Ted,' he said. 'I've beenflapping nonsense all my life. Only He who readeth the heart knowswhether this is anything more than vanity. Ted, I don't. But He knows,He knows, and if I have done foolishly and vainly, in my heart--in myheart'--

  "Just like that he spoke, repeating himself, and he stopped quite shortand handed the book to me, trembling. Then the old shine came back intohis eye. I remember it all fairly well, because I repeated it and actedit to my old mother when I got home, to cheer her up a bit. 'Take thisbook and read it,' he said. 'It's my last word, my very last word. I'veleft all my property to you, Ted, and may you use it better than I havedone.' And then he fell a-coughing.

  "I remember that quite well even now, and how I went home cock-a-hoop,and how he was in bed the next time I called. The housekeeper wasdownstairs drunk, and I fooled about--as a young man will--with thegirl in the passage before I went to him. He was sinking fast. But eventhen his vanity clung to him.

  "'Have you read it?' he whispered.

  "'Sat up all night reading it,' I said in his ear to cheer him. 'It'sthe last,' said I, and then, with a memory of some poetry or other inmy head, 'but it's the bravest and best.'

  "He smiled a little and tried to squeeze my hand as a woman might do,and left off squeezing in the middle, and lay still. 'The bravest andthe best,' said I again, seeing it pleased him. But he didn't answer.I heard the girl giggle outside the door, for occasionally we'd hadjust a bit of innocent laughter, you know, at his ways. I looked athis face, and his eyes were closed, and it was just as if somebody hadpunched in his nose on either side. But he was still smiling. It'squeer to think of--he lay dead, lay dead there, an utter failure, withthe smile of success on his face.

  "That was the end of my uncle. You can imagine me and my mother sawthat he had a decent funeral. Then, of course, came the hunt for thewill. We began decent and respectful at first, and before the day wasout we were ripping chairs, and smashing bureau panels, and soundingwalls. Every hour we expected those others to come in. We asked thehousekeeper, and found she'd actually witnessed a will--on an ordinaryhalf-sheet of notepaper it was written, and very short, she said--nota month ago. The other witness was the gardener, and he bore her outword for word. But I'm hanged if there was that or any other will tobe found. The way my mother talked must have made him turn in hisgrave. At last a lawyer at Reigate sprang one on us that had been madeyears ago during some temporary quarrel with my mother. I'm blest ifthat wasn't the only will to be discovered anywhere, and it left everypenny he possessed to that 'Take 'im away' youngster of his secondcousin's--a chap who'd never had to stand his talking not for oneafternoon of his life."

  The man with the glass eye stopped.

  "I thought you said"--I began.

  "Half a minute," said the man with the glass eye. "_I_ had to waitfor the end of the story till this very morning, and I was a blessedsight more interested than you are. You just wait a bit too. Theyexecuted the will, and the other chap inherited, and directly he wasone-and-twenty he began to blew it. How he did blew it, to be sure! Hebet, he drank, he got in the papers for this and that. I tell you, itmakes me wriggle to think of the times he had. He blewed every ha'pennyof it before he was thirty, and the last I heard of him was--Holloway!Three years ago.

  "Well, I naturally fell on hard times, because, as you see, the onlytrade I knew was legacy-cadging. All my plans were waiting over tobegin, so to speak, when the old chap died. I've had my ups and downssince then. Just now it's a period of depression. I tell you frankly,I'm on the look-out for help. I was hunting round my room to findsomething to raise a bit on for immediate necessities, and the sightof all those presentation volumes--no one will buy them, not to wrapbutter in, even--well, they annoyed me. I'd promised him not to partwith them, and I never kept a promise easier. I let out at them with myboot, and sent them shooting across the room. One lifted at the kick,and spun through the air. And out of it flapped--You guess?

  "It was the will. He'd given it me himself in that very last volume ofall."

  He folded his arms on the table, and looked sadly with the active eyeat his empty tankard. He shook his head slowly, and said softly, "I'dnever _opened_ the book, much more cut a page!" Then he looked up, witha bitter laugh, for my sympathy. "Fancy hiding it there! Eigh? Of allplaces."

  He began to fish absently for a dead fly with his finger. "It justshows you the vanity of authors," he said, looking up at me. "It wasn'tno trick of his. He'd meant perfectly fair. He'd really thought I wasreally going home to read that blessed book of his through. But itshows you, don't it?"--his eye went down to the tankard again,--"Itshows you, too, how we poor human beings fail to understand oneanother."

  But there was no misunderstanding the eloquent thirst of his eye.He accepted with ill-feigned surprise. He said, in the usual subtleformula, that he didn't mind if he did.