"Did you--did you--know, then, my great-gr-nd-m-ther?" I said.
He pulled up his coat sleeve--"Is that her name?" he said.
"Eliza--"
There, I declare, was the very name of the kind old creature written in red on his arm.
"YOU knew her old," he said, divining my thoughts (with his strange knack); "I knew her young and lovely. I danced with her at the Bury ball. Did I not, dear, dear Miss ----?"
As I live, he here mentioned dear gr-nny's MAIDEN name. Her maiden name was ----. Her honored married name was ----.
"She married your great-gr-ndf-th-r the year Poseidon won the Newmarket Plate," Mr. Pinto dryly remarked.
Merciful powers! I remember, over the old shagreen knife and spoon case on the sideboard in my gr-nny's parlor, a print by Stubbs of that very horse. My grandsire, in a red coat, and his fair hair flowing over his shoulders, was over the mantelpiece, and Poseidon won the Newmarket Cup in the year 1783!
"Yes; you are right. I danced a minuet with her at Bury that very night, before I lost my poor leg. And I quarreled with your grandf--, ha!"
As he said "Ha!" there came three quiet little taps on the table--it is the middle table in the "Gray's-Inn CoffeeHouse," under the bust of the late Duke of W-ll-ngt-n.
"I fired in the air," he continued; "did I not?" (Tap, tap, tap.)
"Your grandfather hit me in the leg. He married three months afterwards. 'Captain Brown,' I said 'who could see Miss Sm-th without loving her?' She is there! She is there!" (Tap, tap, tap.) "Yes, my first love--"
But here there came tap, tap, which everybody knows means "No."
"I forgot," he said, with a faint blush stealing over his wan features, "she was not my first love. In Germ--in my own country--there WAS a young woman--"
Tap, tap, tap. There was here quite a lively little treble knock; and when the old man said, "But I loved thee better than all the world, Eliza," the affirmative signal was briskly repeated.
And this I declare UPON MY HONOR. There was, I have said, a bottle of port wine before us--I should say a decanter. That decanter was LIFTED UP, and out of it into our respective glasses two bumpers of wine were poured. I appeal to Mr. Hart, the landlord--I appeal to James, the respectful and intelligent waiter, if this statement is not true? And when we had finished that magnum, and I said--for I did not now in the least doubt her presence--"Dear gr-nny, may we have another magnum?" the table DISTINCTLY rapped "No.".
"Now, my good sir," Mr. Pinto said, who really began to be affected by the wine, "you understand the interest I have taken in you. I loved Eliza ----" (of course I don't mention family names). "I knew you had that box which belonged to her--I will give you what you like for that box. Name your price at once, and I pay you on the spot."
"Why, when you came out, you said you had not six-pence in your pocket."
"Bah! give you anything you like--fifty--a hundred--a tausend pound."
"Come, come," said I, "the gold of the box may be worth nine guineas, and the facon we will put at six more."
"One tausend guineas!" he screeched. "One tausend and fifty pound dere!" and he sank back in his chair--no, by the way, on his bench, for he was sitting with his back to one of the partitions of the boxes, as I dare say James remembers.
"DON'T go on in this way," I continued rather weakly, for I did not know whether I was in a dream. "If you offer me a thousand guineas for this box I MUST take it. Mustn't I, dear gr-nny?"
The table most distinctly said "Yes"; and putting out his claws to seize the box, Mr. Pinto plunged his hooked nose into it, and eagerly inhaled some of my 47 with a dash of Hardman.
"But stay, you old harpy!" I exclaimed, being now in a sort of rage, and quite familiar with him. "Where is the money? Where is the check?"
"James, a piece of note paper and a receipt stamp!"
"This is all mighty well, sir," I said, "but I don't know you; I never saw you before. I will trouble you to hand me that box back again, or give me a check with some known signature."
"Whose? Ha, Ha, HA!"
The room happened to be very dark. Indeed all the waiters were gone to supper, and there were only two gentlemen snoring in their respective boxes. I saw a hand come quivering down from the ceiling--a very pretty hand, on which was a ring with a coronet, with a lion rampant gules for a crest. I saw that hand take a dip of ink and write across the paper. Mr. Pinto, then, taking a gray receipt stamp out of his blue leather pocketbook, fastened it on to the paper by the usual process; and the hand then wrote across the receipt stamp, went across the table and shook hands with Pinto, and then, as if waving him an adieu, vanished in the direction of the ceiling.
There was the paper before me, wet with the ink. There was the pen which THE HAND had used. Does anybody doubt me? I have that pen now,--a cedar stick of a not uncommon sort, and holding one of Gillott's pens. It is in my inkstand now, I tell you. Anybody may see it. The handwriting on the check, for such the document was, was the writing of a female. It ran thus:--"London, midnight, March 31, 1862. Pay the bearer one thousand and fifty pounds.
Rachel Sidonia. To Messrs. Sidonia, Pozzosanto and Co., London."
"Noblest and best of women!" said Pinto, kissing the sheet of paper with much reverence. "My good Mr. Roundabout, I suppose you do not question THAT signature?"
Indeed the house of Sidonia, Pozzosanto and Co., is known to be one of the richest in Europe, and as for the Countess Rachel, she was known to be the chief manager of that enormously wealthy establishment. There was only one little difficulty, the Countess Rachel died last October.
I pointed out this circumstance, and tossed over the paper to Pinto with a sneer.
