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You recollect, she sketched your face and figure at all possible angles." "And last quarter's?" Charles inquired, staggering. The clerk turned up the entry. "Drawn on the 10th of July," he answered, carelessly, as if it mattered nothing. Then I knew why the Colonel had run across to England. Charles positively reeled. "Take me home, Sey," he cried. "I am ruined, ruined!
"Won't do," he answered, calmly. "Be sure of your ground. Outside the jurisdiction! You can only do that on an extradition warrant." "Well, then, at Seldon, in London, in this house, and elsewhere," Charles cried out excitedly. "Hold hard to him, Sey; by law or without it, blessed if he isn't going even now to wriggle away from us!"
"It's the prettiest place I ever saw in my life," he said; "but, hang it all, Sey, I won't be imposed upon." So he made up his mind, it being now December, to return to London. We met the Count next day, and stopped his carriage, and told him so. Charles thought this would have the immediate effect of bringing the man to reason.
"There, at least, I shall be safe, Sey," he said to me plaintively, with a weary smile. "Wrengold, at any rate, won't try to take me in except, of course, in the regular way of business." We spent a delightful week there. The lines had fallen to us in pleasant places. On the night we arrived Wrengold gave a small bachelor party in our honour.
It was a very big estimate. We talked and shilly-shallied till Sir Charles grew angry. He lost his temper at last. "They know I'm a millionaire, Sey," he said, "and they're playing the old game of trying to diddle me. But I won't be diddled. Except Colonel Clay, no man has ever yet succeeded in bleeding me. And shall I let myself be bled as if I were a chamois among these innocent mountains?
I believed I had been in a room with him somewhere in London. Charles was looking over my shoulder. He gave a sudden little start. "Why, I know that fellow!" he cried. "You recollect him, Sey; he's Finglemore's brother the chap that didn't go out to China!" Then I remembered at once where it was that I had seen him at the broker's in the city, before we sailed for America. "What Christian name?"
But when a man turns up smiling every time in a different disguise, which fits him like a skin, and always apparently with the best credentials, why, hang it all, Sey, there's no wrestling with him anyhow." "Who could have come to us, for example, better vouched," I acquiesced, "than the Honourable David?" "Exactly so," Charles murmured. "I invited him myself, for my own advantage.
If God only gives me tolerable health, I think now I shall be very happy; work and science calm the mind and stop gnawing in the brain; and as I am glad to say that I do now recognise that I shall never be a great man, I may set myself peacefully on a smaller journey; not without hope of coming to the inn before nightfall. O dass mein Leben Nach diesem Ziel ein ewig Wandeln sey!
If thou pulle the sothe to sey, Thi soule goeth to the fyre of hell Hit cummes never out til doomsday, But ther ever in payne to dwelle." An old story preserved for us by Saxo Grammaticus describes the visit of some Danish heroes to Guthmund, a giant who rules a delightful land beyond a certain river crossed by a golden bridge.
Our new acquaintance was extremely communicative: "Knows his place in society, Sey," Sir Charles said to me afterwards, "and is therefore not afraid of talking freely, as so many people are who have doubts about their position." We exchanged cards before we rose. Our new friend's name turned out to be Dr. Edward Polperro. "In practice here?" I inquired, though his garb belied it.
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