Mr. Fortescue by William Westall

W >> William Westall >> Mr. Fortescue

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

While studying therapeutics and pathology under Professor Giessler, of
Zurich, shortly after my return to Europe, I took up the subject of
longevity, as to which Giessler had collected much curious information,
and formed certain theories, one being that people of sound constitution
and strong vitality, with no hereditary predisposition to disease may, by
observing a correct regimen, easily live to be a hundred, preserving until
that age their faculties virtually intact--in other words, only begin to
be old at a hundred. So far I agree with him, but as to what constituted a
"correct regimen" we differed. He held that the life most conducive to
length of years was that of the scholar--his own, in fact--regular,
uneventful, reflective, and sedentary. I, on the other hand, thought that
the man who passed much of his time in the open air, moving about and
using his limbs, would live the longer--other things being equal, and
assuming that both observed the accepted rules of health.

The result of our discussion was a friendly wager. "You try your way; I
will try mine," said Giessler, "and we will see who lives the longer--at
any rate, the survivor will. The survivor must also publish an account of
his system, _pour encourageur les autres_."

As we were of the same age, equally sound in constitution and strong in
physique, and not greatly dissimilar in temperament, I accepted the
challenge. The competition is still going on. Every New Year's day we
write each other a letter, always in the same words, which both answers
and asks the same questions: "Still alive?" If either fails to receive his
letter at the specified time, he will presume that the other is _hors de
combat_, if not dead, and make further inquiry. But I think I shall win.
Three years ago I met Giessler at the meeting of the British Association,
and, though he denied it, he was palpably aging. His shoulders were bent,
his hearing and eye-sight failing, and the _area senilis_ was very
strongly marked, while I--am what you see.

I have, however, had an advantage over the professor, which it is only
fair to mention. In my wanderings I have always taken occasion, when
opportunity offered, to observe the habits of tribes who are remarkable
for longevity. None are more remarkable in this respect than the
Callavayas of the Andes, and I satisfied myself that they do really live
long, though perhaps not so long as some of them say. Now, these people
are herbalists, and when they reach middle age make a practice of drinking
a decoction which, as they believe, has the power of prolonging life. I
brought with me to Europe specimens and seeds of the plant (peculiar to
the region) from which the simple is distilled, analyzed the one and
cultivated the other. The conclusion at which I arrived was, that the
plant in question did actually possess the property of retarding that
softening of the arteries which more than anything else causes the
decrepitude of old age. It contains a peculiar alkaloid of which, for
thirty years past, I had taken (in solution) a much-diluted dose almost
daily. You see the result. I also give Ramon an occasional dose, and he is
the most vigorous man of his years I know. I sent some to Giessler, but he
said it was an empirical remedy, and declined to take it. He preferred
electric baths. I take my electric baths by horseback exercise, and riding
to hounds.

Yes, I believe I shall finish my century--without becoming senile either
in body or mind--if I can escape the Griscelli. I was in hopes that I had
escaped them by coming here; but I never stay long in Europe that they
don't sooner or later find me out. I think I shall have to spend the
remainder of my life in America or the East. The consciousness of being
continually hunted, that at any moment I may be confronted with a murderer
and perchance be murdered, is too trying for a man of my age. To tell the
truth, I am beginning to feel that I have nerves; though my elixir delays
death, it does not insure perpetual youth; and propitiating these people
is out of the question--I have tried it.

Three years after my return from Venezuela, Guiseppe, son of the man whom
I killed at Caracas, tried to kill me at Amsterdam, fired at me
point-blank with a duelling pistol, and so nearly succeeded that the
bullet grazed my cheek and cut a piece out of my ear. Yet I not only
pardoned him, but bribed the police to let him go, and gave him money.
Well, seven years later he repeated the attempt at Naples, waylaid me at
night and attacked me with a dagger, but I also happened to be armed, and
Guiseppi Griscelli died.

At Paris, too--indeed, while the empire lasted--I found it expedient to
shun France altogether. At that time Corsicans were greatly in favor;
several members of the Griscelli family belonged to the secret police and
had great influence, and as I never took an _alias_ and my name is not
common, I was tracked like a criminal. Once I had to leave Paris by
stealth at dead of night; another time I saved my life by simulating
death. But why recount all the attempts on my life? Another time, perhaps.
The subject is not a pleasant one, but this I will say: I never spared a
Griscelli that I had not cause to regret my clemency. The last I spared
was the young man who tried to murder me down in the wood there; and if he
does not repay my forbearance by repeating the attempt, he will be false
to the traditions of his race.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

EPILOGUE.

It is scarcely necessary to observe that the deciphering of Mr.
Fortescue's notes and the writing of his memoirs were not done in a day.
There were gaps to be filled up, obscure passages to be elucidated, and
parts of several chapters and the whole of the last were written to his
dictation, so that the summer came and went, and another hunting-season
was "in view," before my work, in its present shape, was completed. I
would fain have made it more complete by giving a fuller account of Mr.
Fortescue's adventures (some of which must have been very remarkable)
between his first return from South America and his appearance at Matching
Green, and I should doubtless have been able to do so (for he had promised
to continue and amplify his narrative during the winter, as also to give
me the recipe of his elixir), had not our intercourse been abruptly
terminated by one of the strangest events in my experience and, I should
think, in his.

But, before going further, I would just observe that Mr. Fortescue's
cynicism, which, when I first knew him, had rather repelled me, was only
skin-deep. Though he held human life rather cheaper than I quite liked, he
was a kind and liberal master and a generous giver. His largesses were
often princely and invariably anonymous, for he detested everything that
savored of ostentation and parade. On the other hand, he had no more
tolerance for mendicants in broadcloth than for beggars in rags, and to
those who asked he gave nothing. As an instance of his dislike of
publicity, I may mention that I had been with him several months before I
discovered that he had published, under a pseudonym, several scientific
works which, had he acknowledged them, would have made him famous.

After Guiseppe Griscelli's attempt on his life, I prevailed on Mr.
Fortescue never to go outside the park gates unaccompanied; when he went
to town, or to Amsterdam, Ramon always went with him, and both were armed.
I also gave strict orders to the lodge-keepers to admit no strangers
without authority, and to give me immediate information as to any
suspicious-looking characters whom they might see loitering about.

These precautions, I thought, would be quite sufficient to prevent any
attack being made on Mr. Fortescue in the daytime. It was less easy to
guard against a surprise during the night, for the park-palings were not
so high as to be unclimbable; and the idea of a night-watchman was
suggested only to be dismissed, for the very sufficient reason that when
he was most wanted he would almost certainly be asleep. I had no fear of
Griscelli breaking in at the front door; but the house was not
burglar-proof, and, as it happened, the weak point in our defence was one
of the windows of Mr. Fortescue's bedroom. It looked into the orchard,
and, by climbing a tree which grew hard by, an active man could easily
reach it, even without a ladder. The danger was all the greater, as, when
the weather was mild, Mr. Fortescue always slept with the window open. I
proposed iron bars, to which he objected that iron bars would make his
room look like a prison. And then I had a happy thought.

"Let us fix a strong brass rod right across the window-frame," I said, "in
such a way that nobody can get in without laying hold of it, and by
connecting it with a strong dynamo-battery inside, make sure that the man
who does lay hold of it will not be able to let go."

The idea pleased Mr. Fortescue, and he told me to carry it out, which I
did promptly and effectively, taking care to make the battery so powerful
that, if Mr. Griscelli should try to effect an entrance by the window, he
would be disagreeably surprised. The circuit was, of course, broken by
dividing the rod in two parts and interposing a non-conductor between
them.

To prevent any of the maids being "shocked," I told Ramon (who acted as
his master's body servant) to connect the battery every night and
disconnect it every morning. From time to time, moreover, I overhauled the
apparatus to see that it was in good working order, and kept up its
strength by occasionally recharging the cells.

Once, when I was doing this, Mr. Fortescue said, laughingly: "I don't
think it is any use, Bacon; Griscelli won't come in that way. If, as some
people say, it is the unexpected that happens, it is the expected that
does not happen."

But in this instance both happened--the expected and the unexpected.

As I mentioned at the outset of my story, the habits of the Kingscote
household were of an exemplary regularity. Mr. Fortescue, who rose early,
expected everybody else to follow his example in this respect, and, as a
rule, everybody did so.

One morning, at the beginning of October, when the sun rose about six
o'clock, and we rose with it, I got up, donned my dressing-gown, and went,
as usual, to take my matutinal bath. In order to reach the bath-room I had
to pass Mr. Fortescue's chamber-door. As I neared it I heard within loud
exclamations of horror and dismay, in a voice which I recognized as the
voice of Ramon. Thinking that something was wrong, that Mr. Fortescue had
perchance been taken suddenly ill, I pushed open the door and entered
without ceremony.

Mr. Fortescue was sitting up in bed, looking with startled gaze at the
window; and Ramon stood in the middle of the room, aghast and dismayed.

And well he might, for there hung at the window a man--or the body of
one--his hands convulsively grasping the magnetized rod, the distorted
face pressed against the glass, the lack-lustre eyes wide open, the jaw
drooping. In that ghastly visage I recognized the features of Giuseppe
Griscelli!

"Is he dead, doctor?" asked Mr. Fortescue.

"He has been dead several hours," I said, as I examined the corpse.

"So much the better; the brood is one less, and perhaps after this they
will let me live in peace. They must see that so far as their attempts
against it are concerned, I bear a charmed life. You have done me a great
service, Doctor Bacon, and I hold myself your debtor."

Ramon and I disconnected the battery and dragged the body into the room.
We found in the pockets a butcher's knife and a revolver, and round the
waist a rope, with which the would-be murderer had doubtless intended to
descend from the window after accomplishing his purpose.

This incident, of course, caused a great sensation both at Kingscote and
in the country-side, and, equally of course, there was an inquest, at
which Mr. Fortescue, Ramon, and myself, were the only witnesses. As Mr.
Fortescue did not want it to be known that he was the victim of a
_vendetta_, and detested the idea of having himself and his affairs
discussed by the press, we were careful not to gainsay the popular belief
that Griscelli was neither more nor less than a dangerous and resolute
burglar, and, as his possession of lethal weapons proved, a potential
murderer. As for the cause of death I said, as I then fully believed
(though I have since had occasion to modify this opinion somewhat), that
the battery was not strong enough to kill a healthy man, and that
Griscelli had died of nervous shock and fear acting on a weak heart. In
this view the jury concurred and returned a verdict of accidental death,
with the (informal) rider that it "served him right." The chairman, a
burly farmer, warmly congratulated me on my ingenuity, and regretted that
he had not "one of them things" at every window in his house.

So far so good; but, unfortunately, a London paper which lived on
sensation, and happened at the moment to be in want of a new one, took the
matter up. One of the editor's jackals came down to Kingscote, and there
and elsewhere picked up a few facts concerning Mr. Fortescue's antecedents
and habits, which he served up to his readers in a highly spiced and
amazingly mendacious article, entitled "old Fortescue and his Strange
Fortunes." But the sting of the article was in its tail. The writer threw
doubt on the justice of the verdict. It remained to be proved, he said,
that Griscelli was a burglar, and his death accidental. And even burglars
had their rights. The law assumed them to be innocent until they were
proved to be guilty, and it could be permitted neither to Mr. Fortescue
nor to any other man to take people's lives, merely because he suspected
them of an intention to come in by the window instead of the door. By what
right, he asked, did Mr. Fortescue place on his window an appliance as
dangerous as forked lightning, and as deadly as dynamite? What was the
difference between magnetized bars in a window and spring-guns on a
game-preserve? In conclusion, the writer demanded a searching
investigation into the circumstances attending Guiseppe Griscelli's death,
likewise the immediate passing of an act of Parliament forbidding, under
heavy penalties, the use of magnetic batteries as a defence against
supposed burglars.

This effusion (which he read in a marked copy of the paper obligingly
forwarded by the enterprising editor) put Mr. Fortescue in a terrible
passion, which made him, for a moment, look younger than ever I had seen
him look before. The outrage rekindled the fire of his youth; he seemed to
grow taller, his eyes glowed with anger, and, had the enterprising editor
been present, he would have passed a very bad quarter of an hour.

"The fellow who wrote this is worse than a murderer!" he exclaimed. "I'll
shoot him--unless he prefers cold steel, and then I shall serve him as I
served General Griscelli; and 'pon my soul I believe Griscelli was the
least rascally of the two! I would as lief be hunted by blood-hounds as be
stabbed in the back by anonymous slanderers!"

And then he wanted me to take a challenge to the enterprising editor, and
arrange for a meeting, which rendered it necessary to remind him that we
were not in the England of fifty years ago, and that duelling was
abolished, and that his traducer would not only refuse to fight, but
denounce his challenger to the police and gibbet him in his paper. I
pointed out, on the other hand, that the article was clearly libellous,
and recommended Mr. Fortescue either to obtain a criminal information
against the proprietor of the paper, or sue him for damages.

"No, sir!" he answered, with a gesture of indignation and disdain--"no,
sir, I shall neither obtain a criminal information nor sue for damages.
The man who goes to law surrenders his liberty of action and becomes the
sport of chicaning lawyers and hair-splitting judges. I would rather lose
a hundred thousand pounds!"

Mr. Fortescue passed the remainder of the day at his desk, writing and
arranging his papers. The next morning I heard, without surprise, that he
and Ramon were going abroad.

"I don't know when I shall return," said Mr. Fortescue, as we shook hands
at the hall door, "but act as you always do when I am from home, and in
the course of a few days you will hear from me."

I did hear from him, and what I heard was of a nature so surprising as
nearly to take my breath away.

"You will never see me at Kingscote again," he wrote; "I am going to a
country where I shall be safe, as well from the attacks of Corsican
assassins as from the cowardly outrages of rascally newspapers." And then
he gave instructions as to the disposal of his property at Kingscote.
Certain things, which he enumerated, were to be packed up in cases and
forwarded to Amsterdam. The furniture and effects in and about the house
were to be sold, and the proceeds placed at the disposal of the county
authorities for the benefit of local charities. Every outdoor servant was
to receive six months' pay, every in-door servant twelve months' pay, in
lieu of notice. Geirt was to join Mr. Fortescue in a month's time at
Damascus; and to me, in lieu of notice, and as evidence of his regard, he
gave all his horses, carriages, saddlery, harness, and stable equipments
(not being freehold) of every description whatsoever, to be dealt with as
I thought fit for my personal advantage. His solicitors, with my help,
would wind up his affairs, and his bankers had instructions to discharge
all his liabilities.

His memoirs, or so much of them as I had written down, I might (if I
thought they would interest anybody) publish, but not before the fiftieth
year of the Victorian era, or the death of the German emperor, whichever
event happened first. The letter concluded thus: "I strongly advise you to
buy a practice and settle down to steady work. We may meet again. If I
live to be a hundred, you shall hear from me. If I die sooner you will
probably hear of my demise from the house at Amsterdam, to whom please
send your new address."

I was exceedingly sorry to lose Mr. Fortescue. Our intercourse had been
altogether pleasant and agreeable, and to myself personally in a double
sense profitable; for he had taught me many things and rewarded me beyond
my deserts. Also the breaking up of Kingscote and the disposal of the
household went much against the grain. Yet I freely confess that Mr.
Fortescue's splendid gift proved a very effective one, and almost
reconciled me to his absence.

All the horses and carriages, except five of the former, and two traps, I
sent up to Tattersall's. As the horses, without exception, were of the
right sort, most of them perfect hunters, and it was known that Mr.
Fortescue would not have an unsound or vicious animal in his stables, they
fetched high prices. The sale brought me over six thousand pounds.
Two-thirds of this I put out at interest on good security; with the
remainder I bought a house and practice in a part of the county as to
which I will merely observe that it is pleasantly situated and within
reach of three packs of hounds. The greater part of the year I work hard
at my profession; but when November comes round I engage a second
assistant and (weather permitting) hunt three and sometimes four days a
week, so long as the season lasts.

And often when hounds are running hard and I am well up, or when I am
"hacking" homeward after a good day's sport, I think gratefully of the man
to whom I owe so much, and wonder whether I shall ever see him again.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20