"Ancestor Jorico"

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 263, 6 November 1929, Page 22

"Ancestor Jorico"

By W. J. LOCKE. HJ

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. CHAPTER 1 introduces MAJOR WILFRID TOBIN BOYLE, otherwise Toby, a descendant of John: Gregory .Jorico, and Toby's valet, formerly his batman, simply known as JONES. This Jones was blown up in a trench during the war, and found wandering about, memory and speech gone. Toby befriended him, and afterwards took him into his employ. The two communicate by means of rough sketches drawn on- paper. CHAPTER 2 explains old JORICO, familiarly known as "Ancestor Jorico," who died in 1830 and left £500,000 to his son, but it was never discovered. SIR GREGORY BINKLEY. gives, a dinner, to which ,-, he invites Toby, HETTY DALRYMPLE (a widow) and NICHOLAS EGERTON (her brother),- and FORCESTER (the man who tells the story). The four, leaving out Forcester, are the only descendants of Ancestor Jorico. CHAPTER 3 —Binkie breaks the news that he has tracked the treasure to Trinidad Island in the West Indies, and it is arranged they should all go over in the 1300-ton yacht of LADY JANE 'CROWE, a cousin of Binkie's. CHAPTER 4—Jones unearths some rela- j tions in Sevenoaks, in Kent, and when , Toby drives him down there they find a remarkable girl—who turns out to be < a cousin of Jones—RUTH TELLIFER, who interests Toby, and is a typical "Locke" young woman, goddess-like, with a touch of mystery.

CHAPTER V.

Toby took the offered chair bj the table, -but Jones .insisted on standing until Toby signified to him that here the rules of the Army and of domestic service could be neglected. . Jones sat down on the edge of a straight-backed chair. There was a short and peculiarly awkward silence. The two women were perfectly civil, but on their guard. Toby felt rather a fool. He turned helplessly to Jones.' "What about it?" he asked.' Jones signed Tapidly, pointing now to the mother, now to 'the daughter. "He says," Toby at last interpreted, "that he is a nephew of yours—that your sister married his lather. Did you have a sister?" The elder woman's face became stony. "I did, sir." Toby felt confronted with family trouble. . . "You see, Mrs.——" "Tellifer." "You see, Mrs. Tellifer," said Toby, .Wiith his. kind smile, "this poor chap since he'was knocked out hasn't been able to tell Anybody his name.' I've tried to get at it, in all sorts of ways. For instance, he knows mine—Boyle. I could.convey it to:him by the picture of a kettle boiling, and so on. I've tried him with pictures of tailors and all kinds of smiths—trades you know—and in fact- everything pictorial I could think of—and all no good. How could he give me any idea of your name, now?" "A gentleman once told me," said the girl calmly, "that our name came from the Norman French, and meant "cut iron." I Toby eyed her shrewdly, for she spoke in an educated way. "I'm afraid," said he, "that Jones isn't enough of a French scholar to express it." ",..,,. \ He turned and met Jones' intelligent yet haunted eyes. He gave him to understand that they wanted him to tell them their names as a guarantee of good faith. He held up pathetically helplesshands. As an experiment Toby drew on the little block which he always carried, a casque half cleft by a sword. Jones sprang up, his-pallid face alive with excitement. He made the passes which signified to Toby, France, and France only, and, taking the block, sketched the unmistakable outlines of France, and handed it to Mrs. Tellifer. Then, by way of confirmation, he took the knife from the table half laid for tea and made as though to cut the kitchen range. "He knows the name right enough," said the girl, nodding with some kindness of recognition to the quivering man, who, at her sign, resumed his seat. "I'm glad that's fixed, anyhow," said Toby, with a sense of relief. "You see, we're not impostors. What he really wants, I think, is to get-at his own name. He knows it, of course, but can't tell us. Won't you help, Mrs. Tellifer?" ■ "1 had a sister," said the woman. "She's dead now, but I never speak of her.. Perhaps you can understand, sir. After all, even if he knows our name, that doesn't prove he's my sister's child, does it?"

It didn't. Toby glanced somewhat ruefully at the- two ■women. Presently the oirl said: , °' "Shall' I bring the album?" "If you like, Ruth." That was the first time Toby had heard her name. He followed her figure as. she disappeared through the side door, .probably into a bedroom. She vaguely suggested her forerunner amid the golden corn. She came back almost immediately with an antiquated bursting leather volume with a braes clasp, which she handed to Toby. He opened it idly to find, as he had expected, dreadful cartes de visite, as they used 'to be called, representing dreary people in impossible attitudes, all stuck into the slips of the album's embossed pages. As he had nothing to do with the rude forefathers and aunts and uncles of the Tellifers, he passed it to Jones. And then in a minute came identification. Jones leaped excitedly to his feet and presented a ■ page to Mrs. Tellifer—in fact, an open double page. On one side was the photograph of a grim elderly man leaning on a broken column, and on the other that of two little girls. His signs were unmistakable. The man was i Mrs. Tellifer's father. One child was the lady herself. The other was his own mother.' Toby summed up. Mrs. Tellifer yielded. From a-hundred old faded photographs in the bursting family album Jones had put an unerring finger on those with which he was concerned. 'Well,, well," she said with a softened air. "So you're Sophie's son?" Jones, his pale face vividly eager, read her expression and nodded. Toby said cheerily: - "That's..all right, then. Now, what's his name?" "I .wish I could tell you, sir. "Do you mean you won't, or can't?'' Toby asked in his blunt yet pleasant "I can't—.because I don't know." "It means such a lot to the poor fellow," • Toby urged again. "His Army record—to say nothing of his life record, —is lost. Anything you could do for him . . . Even," he added softly,. sensitive of tragedy, "if it gives you . . . if it revives painful memories." Ruth, who had been hovering about somewhat hazily in Toby's eyes, said suddenly: > >/ f "Will you have a cup of tea, sir?" He turjaed with his frank smile.

"I sTiould love one." He was half conscious of the flicker ■of the transformation of an appraising glance into one of approval. This daughter of the soil —'the might-have-heen model ■of : ■ Strang's "Potato Gatherer" —was the least hit disconcerting in her ways.. "I'm sure you're »more than welcome," eaid Mrs. Tellifer. ' Between the respective social attitude of mother and daughter there was a subtle difference. Toby looked down from one to the other, and Jones, in his patient deafness, did the same. Ruth busied herself with the tea things in the preparation of which her mother had been interrupted. Toby leaned forward. "Do tell me what you can. Perhaps I may be able to make further inquiries." "Well, sir, it was like this," said Mrs. Tellifer. And it was like a million other pitiful and sordid stories. Her sister, Sophie, had married a gentleman by the name of Tucker, who carried on a flourishing business as an undertaker at Southampton. There were no children. Then, as Toby said to me, conjeeturally, the poor woman, fed up with talk of corpses, and coffins at breakfast, dinner, tea and supper, bolted with somebody else; somebody in the service of the Royal Mail Steam Packet , Company;. though whether a captain all oyer gold braid, or a stoker in, dungarees, Mrs. Tellifer couldn't say. Nobody knew his name. Tucker might have found out had he not caught his death of cold at a viceadmiral's mid-winter funeral when, ■ of course, he had to look his non-overeoat?.d best, a day or two after his wife's elope,ment. A triumphant pneumonia carried him off .before he could' mention , the name of his betrayer* to his hastily summoned and sorrowing relatives. Rumour alone .connected him with the R.M.S.P.Cp. Thenceforward she had disappeared from the horizon of the Tellifer family, with no member of which- did she ever after hold any kind of communication. She may have married her seducer who held some rank between captain and stoker in the Royal mail service. On the other hand, she may not. She may have had children, said Mrs. Tellifer. On the other hand, she may not.

Toby conversed with' Jones. Mrs. Tellifer regarded them with the bent ■brows of one who suspects black magic. Ruth paused, a hand on the table, her great figure drawn up, and regarded them with some benignity.. To the uninitiated, onlooker—myself, for instance —there was always something uncanny in the intimate Toby-Jones air language. I firmly .believe thaf, had they been Scotsmen, they, would ■ have been able to carry on arguments about predestination and free will. Anyhow, they could tell each other all sorts of thing?. They just sat opposite each other and waved their fingers about. At last; Toby interpreted. His father and mother had been married in the West of England; both were dead. His father, who had followed the sea, when ho was a child, and his mother during his youth. "But hasn't he got anything to show for it?" asked Mrs. Tellifer. . Toby explained how Jones had fallen, wounded and half naked, into his trench 10 years ago. That was all he knew about him. '!Tea's ready," said Ruth. After the meal Toby took up the family album. Old photographs and costumes interested him, he said. Ruth cleared away the tea things, aided simply and efficiently by Jones. She smiled her thanks at him, and Jones' eyes grew bright. • Suddenly Toby drew from the album a large photograph cut from an illustrated weekly. He held it up with a laugh. "What's this doing here?" "That," said Ruth, turning, "is the Countess of Duffield in court dress." "I .know," said Toby. "I designed it." ' She regarded him perplexed. "The dress came from 'Palmyre.'" "How do you know?" "I was her ladyship's maid for five years." "Oh!" said Toby. That explained the absence of many rusticities in the general demeanour of, the potato digging girl. He laughed. "We've each found a guarantee of good faith, apart from Jones. I happen to be 'Palmyre,' and to have designed Lady Duffield's court dress."-

I "Oh!" she said in her turn, and then, with an air of calm friendliness, "You're that Major Boyle, are you, sir?" He nodded somewhat ruefully, "Yes, ■I'm that Major Boyle." ' , "I've -often heard her Ladyship .speak of you," said Ruth. . "Just, fancy, now!" exclaimed Mrs. Tellifer. ,• Toby told Jones of the little discovery. The man expressed his delight, and again Ruth smiled on him. He pointed to heaven, and with his finger sketched to Toby's practised eye an obvious picture of the veiled Ma-' donna, such as one meets with in any Roman Catholic church or book of devotion. "My God!"' said Toby to himself, "the fellow is riot far out." But he fell to wondering where the devil lie had seen a blue-eyed Madonna of a lady's maid. He gave it up. It was time to go. He put in, perhaps- unnecessary, a plea for Jones, the waif and stray indubitable cousin. No matter how unskilled they were in. sign language, his swift intelligence would soon make communication easy. He was such a good fellow. Silently and almost imperceptibly Jones had washed up the tea things, hung the cups on the dresser nail's, and tidied up the kitchen grate.. "Will you tell him, sir," said- Mrs. Tell)fer, "that he'll be welcome whenever he likes to. come?" "And you, Miss Tellifer," said Toby, "perhaps you might give him an hour or two of healthy digging." She laughed outright for the first time; for Toby could put now and then, a humorous twist on his brown face. '.; "It would be a godsend, sir." .' "Then all's . well," said Toby ; cheerfully. "Good-bye.'; And a thousand thanks for your great kindness and hospitality." The women went out to the gate to see them off. Toby told me about all this, a day or two later. ". , "It's only an unlucky devil like Jones who'would be in.this position. He has established himself as a cousin of Ruth Tellifer, and neither she nor her mother 'have any idea of his name." - 1

"Striking girl, .this ' Ruth Tellifer, you say/' I remarked. Toby waved an impatient hand. "I've told you about her. Now she has carried on in the middle of all this female cat vanity which I've got to do With —I know .I'm prejudiced, but that's the side of 'em I'm up against all the time—and the Duffild woman is just hell's delight in the shop—the worst type —how the girl, moulds herself to it is bevond mv comprehension."

"Striking girl, .this ' Ruth Tellifer, you say/' I remarked. Toby waved an impatient hand. "I've told you about her. Now she has carried on in the middle of all this female cat vanity which I've got to do With—l know .I'm prejudiced, but that's the side of 'em I'm up against all the time—and the Duffild woman is just hell's delight in the shop—the worst type —how the girl, moulds herself to it is beyond my comprehension." "Your ignorance of woman, my dear Toby," said I ,with an air of venerable wisdom, "is colossal." "Thank,the good.and merciful God!" said Toby, pulling out his pipe. (To be continued daily.)