The Wrong Box(不是这个盒子)

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THE WRONG BOX

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON & LLOYD

OSBOURNE

THE WRONG BOX

PREFACE

'Nothing like a little judicious levity,' says Michael Finsbury in the text:

nor can any better excuse be found for the volume in the reader's hand.

The authors can but add that one of them is old enough to be ashamed of

himself, and the other young enough to learn better.

R. L. S. L. O.

THE WRONG BOX

CHAPTER I.

In Which Morris Suspects

In Which Morris SuspectsIn Which Morris Suspects

In Which Morris Suspects

How very little does the amateur, dwelling at home at ease,

comprehend the labours and perils of the author, and, when he smilingly

skims the surface of a work of fiction, how little does he consider the

hours of toil, consultation of authorities, researches in the Bodleian,

correspondence with learned and illegible Germans--in one word, the vast

scaffolding that was first built up and then knocked down, to while away

an hour for him in a railway train! Thus I might begin this tale with a

biography of Tonti--birthplace, parentage, genius probably inherited from

his mother, remarkable instance of precocity, etc--and a complete treatise

on the system to which he bequeathed his name. The material is all beside

me in a pigeon-hole, but I scorn to appear vainglorious. Tonti is dead, and

I never saw anyone who even pretended to regret him; and, as for the

tontine system, a word will suffice for all the purposes of this unvarnished

narrative.

A number of sprightly youths (the more the merrier) put up a certain

sum of money, which is then funded in a pool under trustees; coming on

for a century later, the proceeds are fluttered for a moment in the face of

the last survivor, who is probably deaf, so that he cannot even hear of his

success--and who is certainly dying, so that he might just as well have lost.

The peculiar poetry and even humour of the scheme is now apparent, since

it is one by which nobody concerned can possibly profit; but its fine,

sportsmanlike character endeared it to our grandparents.

When Joseph Finsbury and his brother Masterman were little lads in

white-frilled trousers, their father--a well-to-do merchant in Cheapside--

caused them to join a small but rich tontine of seven-and-thirty lives. A

thousand pounds was the entrance fee; and Joseph Finsbury can remember

to this day the visit to the lawyer's, where the members of the tontine--all

children like himself--were assembled together, and sat in turn in the big

office chair, and signed their names with the assistance of a kind old

gentleman in spectacles and Wellington boots. He remembers playing with

THE WRONG BOX

the children afterwards on the lawn at the back of the lawyer's house, and

a battle-royal that he had with a brother tontiner who had kicked his shins.

The sound of war called forth the lawyer from where he was dispensing

cake and wine to the assembled parents in the office, and the combatants

were separated, and Joseph's spirit (for he was the smaller of the two)

commended by the gentleman in the Wellington boots, who vowed he had

been just such another at the same age. Joseph wondered to himself if he

had worn at that time little Wellingtons and a little bald head, and when, in

bed at night, he grew tired of telling himself stories of sea-fights, he used

to dress himself up as the old gentleman, and entertain other little boys and

girls with cake and wine.

In the year 1840 the thirty-seven were all alive; in 1850 their number

had decreased by six; in 1856 and 1857 business was more lively, for the

Crimea and the Mutiny carried off no less than nine. There remained in

1870 but five of the original members, and at the date of my story,

including the two Finsburys, but three.

By this time Masterman was in his seventy-third year; he had long

complained of the effects of age, had long since retired from business, and

now lived in absolute seclusion under the roof of his son Michael, the

well-known solicitor. Joseph, on the other hand, was still up and about,

and still presented but a semi-venerable figure on the streets in which he

loved to wander. This was the more to be deplored because Masterman

had led (even to the least particular) a model British life. Industry,

regularity, respectability, and a preference for the four per cents are

understood to be the very foundations of a green old age. All these

Masterman had eminently displayed, and here he was, ab agendo, at

seventy-three; while Joseph, barely two years younger, and in the most

excellent preservation, had disgraced himself through life by idleness and

eccentricity. Embarked in the leather trade, he had early wearied of

business, for which he was supposed to have small parts. A taste for

general information, not promptly checked, had soon begun to sap his

manhood. There is no passion more debilitating to the mind, unless,

perhaps, it be that itch of public speaking which it not infrequently

accompanies or begets. The two were conjoined in the case of Joseph; the

THE WRONG BOX

acute stage of this double malady, that in which the patient delivers

gratuitous lectures, soon declared itself with severity, and not many years

had passed over his head before he would have travelled thirty miles to

address an infant school. He was no student; his reading was confined to

elementary textbooks and the daily papers; he did not even fly as high as

cyclopedias; life, he would say, was his volume. His lectures were not

meant, he would declare, for college professors; they were addressed

direct to 'the great heart of the people', and the heart of the people must

certainly be sounder than its head, for his lucubrations were received with

favour. That entitled 'How to Live Cheerfully on Forty Pounds a Year',

created a sensation among the unemployed. 'Education: Its Aims, Objects,

Purposes, and Desirability', gained him the respect of the shallow-minded.

As for his celebrated essay on 'Life Insurance Regarded in its Relation to

the Masses', read before the Working Men's Mutual Improvement Society,

Isle of Dogs, it was received with a 'literal ovation' by an unintelligent

audience of both sexes, and so marked was the effect that he was next year

elected honorary president of the institution, an office of less than no

emolument--since the holder was expected to come down with a donation-

-but one which highly satisfied his self-esteem.

While Joseph was thus building himself up a reputation among the

more cultivated portion of the ignorant, his domestic life was suddenly

overwhelmed by orphans. The death of his younger brother Jacob saddled

him with the charge of two boys, Morris and John; and in the course of the

same year his family was still further swelled by the addition of a little girl,

the daughter of John Henry Hazeltine, Esq., a gentleman of small property

and fewer friends. He had met Joseph only once, at a lecture-hall in

Holloway; but from that formative experience he returned home to make a

new will, and consign his daughter and her fortune to the lecturer. Joseph

had a kindly disposition; and yet it was not without reluctance that he

accepted this new responsibility, advertised for a nurse, and purchased a

second-hand perambulator. Morris and John he made more readily

welcome; not so much because of the tie of consanguinity as because the

leather business (in which he hastened to invest their fortune of thirty

thousand pounds) had recently exhibited inexplicable symptoms of decline.

THE WRONG BOX

A young but capable Scot was chosen as manager to the enterprise, and the

cares of business never again afflicted Joseph Finsbury. Leaving his

charges in the hands of the capable Scot (who was married), he began his

extensive travels on the Continent and in Asia Minor.

With a polyglot Testament in one hand and a phrase-book in the other,

he groped his way among the speakers of eleven European languages. The

first of these guides is hardly applicable to the purposes of the philosophic

traveller, and even the second is designed more expressly for the tourist

than for the expert in life. But he pressed interpreters into his service--

whenever he could get their services for nothing--and by one means and

another filled many notebooks with the results of his researches.

In these wanderings he spent several years, and only returned to

England when the increasing age of his charges needed his attention. The

two lads had been placed in a good but economical school, where they had

received a sound commercial education; which was somewhat awkward,

as the leather business was by no means in a state to court enquiry. In fact,

when Joseph went over his accounts preparatory to surrendering his trust,

he was dismayed to discover that his brother's fortune had not increased

by his stewardship; even by making over to his two wards every penny he

had in the world, there would still be a deficit of seven thousand eight

hundred pounds. When these facts were communicated to the two brothers

in the presence of a lawyer, Morris Finsbury threatened his uncle with all

the terrors of the law, and was only prevented from taking extreme steps

by the advice of the professional man. 'You cannot get blood from a stone,'

observed the lawyer.

And Morris saw the point and came to terms with his uncle. On the

one side, Joseph gave up all that he possessed, and assigned to his nephew

his contingent interest in the tontine, already quite a hopeful speculation.

On the other, Morris agreed to harbour his uncle and Miss Hazeltine (who

had come to grief with the rest), and to pay to each of them one pound a

month as pocket-money. The allowance was amply sufficient for the old

man; it scarce appears how Miss Hazeltine contrived to dress upon it; but

she did, and, what is more, she never complained. She was, indeed,

sincerely attached to her incompetent guardian. He had never been unkind;

THE WRONG BOX

his age spoke for him loudly; there was something appealing in his whole-

souled quest of knowledge and innocent delight in the smallest mark of

admiration; and, though the lawyer had warned her she was being

sacrificed, Julia had refused to add to the perplexities of Uncle Joseph.

In a large, dreary house in John Street, Bloomsbury, these four dwelt

together; a family in appearance, in reality a financial association. Julia

and Uncle Joseph were, of course, slaves; John, a gentle man with a taste

for the banjo, the music-hall, the Gaiety bar, and the sporting papers, must

have been anywhere a secondary figure; and the cares and delights of

empire devolved entirely upon Morris. That these are inextricably

intermixed is one of the commonplaces with which the bland essayist

consoles the incompetent and the obscure, but in the case of Morris the

bitter must have largely outweighed the sweet. He grudged no trouble to

himself, he spared none to others; he called the servants in the morning, he

served out the stores with his own hand, he took soundings of the sherry,

he numbered the remainder biscuits; painful scenes took place over the

weekly bills, and the cook was frequently impeached, and the tradespeople

came and hectored with him in the back parlour upon a question of three

farthings. The superficial might have deemed him a miser; in his own eyes

he was simply a man who had been defrauded; the world owed him seven

thousand eight hundred pounds, and he intended that the world should pay.

But it was in his dealings with Joseph that Morris's character

particularly shone. His uncle was a rather gambling stock in which he had

invested heavily; and he spared no pains in nursing the security. The old

man was seen monthly by a physician, whether he was well or ill. His diet,

his raiment, his occasional outings, now to Brighton, now to Bournemouth,

were doled out to him like pap to infants. In bad weather he must keep the

house. In good weather, by half-past nine, he must be ready in the hall;

Morris would see that he had gloves and that his shoes were sound; and

the pair would start for the leather business arm in arm. The way there was

probably dreary enough, for there was no pretence of friendly feeling;

Morris had never ceased to upbraid his guardian with his defalcation and

to lament the burthen of Miss Hazeltine; and Joseph, though he was a mild

enough soul, regarded his nephew with something very near akin to hatred.

THE WRONG BOX

But the way there was nothing to the journey back; for the mere sight of

the place of business, as well as every detail of its transactions, was

enough to poison life for any Finsbury.

Joseph's name was still over the door; it was he who still signed the

cheques; but this was only policy on the part of Morris, and designed to

discourage other members of the tontine. In reality the business was

entirely his; and he found it an inheritance of sorrows. He tried to sell it,

and the offers he received were quite derisory. He tried to extend it, and it

was only the liabilities he succeeded in extending; to restrict it, and it was

only the profits he managed to restrict. Nobody had ever made money out

of that concern except the capable Scot, who retired (after his discharge)

to the neighbourhood of Banff and built a castle with his profits. The

memory of this fallacious Caledonian Morris would revile daily, as he sat

in the private office opening his mail, with old Joseph at another table,

sullenly awaiting orders, or savagely affixing signatures to he knew not

what. And when the man of the heather pushed cynicism so far as to send

him the announcement of his second marriage (to Davida, eldest daughter

of the Revd. Alexander McCraw), it was really supposed that Morris

would have had a fit.

Business hours, in the Finsbury leather trade, had been cut to the quick;

even Morris's strong sense of duty to himself was not strong enough to

dally within those walls and under the shadow of that bankruptcy; and

presently the manager and the clerks would draw a long breath, and

compose themselves for another day of procrastination. Raw Haste, on the

authority of my Lord Tennyson, is half-sister to Delay; but the Business

Habits are certainly her uncles. Meanwhile, the leather merchant would

lead his living investment back to John Street like a puppy dog; and,

having there immured him in the hall, would depart for the day on the

quest of seal rings, the only passion of his life. Joseph had more than the

vanity of man, he had that of lecturers. He owned he was in fault, although

more sinned against (by the capable Scot) than sinning; but had he steeped

his hands in gore, he would still not deserve to be thus dragged at the

chariot-wheels of a young man, to sit a captive in the halls of his own

leather business, to be entertained with mortifying comments on his whole

THE WRONG BOX

career--to have his costume examined, his collar pulled up, the presence of

his mittens verified, and to be taken out and brought home in custody, like

an infant with a nurse. At the thought of it his soul would swell with

venom, and he would make haste to hang up his hat and coat and the

detested mittens, and slink upstairs to Julia and his notebooks. The

drawing-room at least was sacred from Morris; it belonged to the old man

and the young girl; it was there that she made her dresses; it was there that

he inked his spectacles over the registration of disconnected facts and the

calculation of insignificant statistics.

Here he would sometimes lament his connection with the tontine. 'If it

were not for that,' he cried one afternoon, 'he would not care to keep me. I

might be a free man, Julia. And I could so easily support myself by giving

lectures.'

'To be sure you could,' said she; 'and I think it one of the meanest

things he ever did to deprive you of that amusement. There were those

nice people at the Isle of Cats (wasn't it?) who wrote and asked you so

very kindly to give them an address. I did think he might have let you go

to the Isle of Cats.'

'He is a man of no intelligence,' cried Joseph. 'He lives here literally

surrounded by the absorbing spectacle of life, and for all the good it does

him, he might just as well be in his coffin. Think of his opportunities! The

heart of any other young man would burn within him at the chance. The

amount of information that I have it in my power to convey, if he would

only listen, is a thing that beggars language, Julia.'

'Whatever you do, my dear, you mustn't excite yourself,' said Julia; 'for

you know, if you look at all ill, the doctor will be sent for.'

'That is very true,' returned the old man humbly, 'I will compose

myself with a little study.' He thumbed his gallery of notebooks. 'I

wonder,' he said, 'I wonder (since I see your hands are occupied) whether

it might not interest you--'

'Why, of course it would,' cried Julia. 'Read me one of your nice stories,

there's a dear.'

He had the volume down and his spectacles upon his nose instanter, as

though to forestall some possible retractation. 'What I propose to read to

THE WRONG BOX

you,' said he, skimming through the pages, 'is the notes of a highly

important conversation with a Dutch courier of the name of David Abbas,

which is the Latin for abbot. Its results are well worth the money it cost

me, for, as Abbas at first appeared somewhat impatient, I was induced to

(what is, I believe, singularly called) stand him drink. It runs only to about

five-and-twenty pages. Yes, here it is.' He cleared his throat, and began to

read.

Mr Finsbury (according to his own report) contributed about four

hundred and ninety-nine five-hundredths of the interview, and elicited

from Abbas literally nothing. It was dull for Julia, who did not require to

listen; for the Dutch courier, who had to answer, it must have been a

perfect nightmare. It would seem as if he had consoled himself by frequent

appliances to the bottle; it would even seem that (toward the end) he had

ceased to depend on Joseph's frugal generosity and called for the flagon on

his own account. The effect, at least, of some mellowing influence was

visible in the record: Abbas became suddenly a willing witness; he began

to volunteer disclosures; and Julia had just looked up from her seam with

something like a smile, when Morris burst into the house, eagerly calling

for his uncle, and the next instant plunged into the room, waving in the air

the evening paper.

It was indeed with great news that he came charged. The demise was

announced of Lieutenant-General Sir Glasgow Biggar, KCSI, KCMG, etc.,

and the prize of the tontine now lay between the Finsbury brothers. Here

was Morris's opportunity at last. The brothers had never, it is true, been

cordial. When word came that Joseph was in Asia Minor, Masterman had

expressed himself with irritation. 'I call it simply indecent,' he had said.

'Mark my words--we shall hear of him next at the North Pole.' And these

bitter expressions had been reported to the traveller on his return. What

was worse, Masterman had refused to attend the lecture on 'Education: Its

Aims, Objects, Purposes, and Desirability', although invited to the

platform. Since then the brothers had not met. On the other hand, they

never had openly quarrelled; Joseph (by Morris's orders) was prepared to

waive the advantage of his juniority; Masterman had enjoyed all through

life the reputation of a man neither greedy nor unfair. Here, then, were all

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THEWRONGBOX1THEWRONGBOXROBERTLOUISSTEVENSON&LLOYDOSBOURNETHEWRONGBOX2PREFACE'Nothinglikealittlejudiciouslevity,'saysMichaelFinsburyinthetext:norcananybetterexcusebefoundforthevolumeinthereader'shand.Theauthorscanbutaddthatoneofthemisoldenoughtobeashamedofhimself,andtheotheryoungenoughtolearnbetter.R...

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