VC -- A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea | Page 6

David Christie Murray
left the old-fashioned
conventicle in which he had had his spiritual upbringing, and had
become a pillar of the Established Church. The cousin had been
christened Jacob and Noakes; but he had embroidered himself into
James Knock Jervoyce; the Knocks being a family of some distinction
in his neighbourhood, and the name Jervoyce having, to his fancy, a
Norman-French sort of aspect which seemed to lift its bearer to a
superior social height. James had many irons in the fire, and seemed to
be prosperously busy at the commercial anvil all day long. Amongst the
business enterprises he had in hand, there was but one which at any
time had appeared to yield him no return for his labours. He had lent
money on the strength of the security afforded by a brine pit in the
neighbourhood of Droitwich; and his creditor having failed in the
stipulated payments, James had foreclosed upon this property and had
undertaken to work it for himself. He found this enterprise a failure, but
since he could induce nobody to take it off his hands, he worked the
property for what it was worth from time to time. There were seasons
in which the pit was almost dry, and when it was impossible to work it
at a profit. There were other seasons when the underground sources
treated him more favourably. A more decided man than Mr. Knock
Jervoyce would probably have decided to abandon the property
altogether, and to let one loss stand for everything. There was a
considerable cost incurred in the upkeep of machinery which was much
oftener idle than engaged; and the occasional employment of the plant

was, of course, on the average much more expensive than its constant
use would have been. James was on the point, after two or three years
of indecision, of relinquishing the working altogether, when Cousin
John came home. There was a conference between the two, and
following on that conference a very strange thing happened. The
worthless mine became a property, and one of the best of its kind in
England. Five men knew how this result was brought about, and three
of them had been for a good many years in the enjoyment of a
pension--one in Australia, one in Canada, and one in the United States.
These pensions were paid by Cousins John and James, and paid by no
means willingly. Not to boggle at this matter, the two cousins, at John's
instigation, had contrived a simple villainy. Very near to the
unproductive salt pit was a noble property of the same kind, and John's
device had been to tap the wealthy neighbour's store by running a little
adit from the worthless shaft into the rich one. It was not an unheard-of
thing for the value of such properties to fluctuate. A rich mine would
pay out, and a poor one at a distance would become suddenly enriched;
and these changes were, no doubt rightly, in the common instance
attributed to the capricious operations of Nature. If the owner of the
tapped sources of the cousins' wealth suspected anything to begin with
nobody ever knew. The only fact with which we need concern
ourselves is that the fraud went on without exposure for many years,
and that James and John alike grew fat on it.
A certain hulking ruffian, with an Australian digger's beard, had turned
up of late to disturb the tranquillity of the partners. He had been asking
what they regarded as an exorbitant price for his silence in respect to
the construction of that adit which has just been mentioned, and had
been fobbed off from time to time with five or ten pounds, as the case
might be, and with promises of more. Young Polson Jervase had caught
this person slinking about the house on the Beacon Hill in what looked
to him like a suspicious fashion, and an interview between the two had
resulted in a stand-up fight in which the blackmailer had got very much
the worst of it. But as he rose from the last round, and spat out the
fragments of one or two broken teeth, he said things which filled the
honourable and manly spirit of young Jervase with a terror to which he
hardly dared to give a name. The terror would have named itself loudly

enough if he had dared but to let it; but next to being an honourable
man himself, the young fellow wanted to believe that he came of
honest people, and the rascal's threats and innuendoes had left him with
a dreadful doubt upon his mind.
The combat had taken place at the very gate of the grey-stone house,
and the old lady in the black satin and the costly yellow lace had flown
out at the finish of
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