AN EXTRAORDINARY STORY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2796, 14 June 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

AN EXTRAORDINARY STORY.

" A Lucky Valet : He comes into a fortune of £200,000 from a Cheltenham General," is the title given to a story by Annie Wakemau, in the San Francisco Chronicle. Miss Wukeman writes :— This little island, its people are constantly complaining, has not a sufficient force of land defenders. Bo tliafc as it may, ita present force is notably topheavy. This results in early retirement, on half pay and pension, of many officers. Major-generals, colonels, lieutenantcolonels, all retired, are plentiful as plum cakes at Christmas ; though seldom they are half us rich. On active duty they have been petty monarchs. They have been supreme over many, have given obedience to few. Eccentricity has sprouted under these favourable conditions, to flourish lustily in retirement. Many are well off, and they gravitate towards those inexpensive yet charming places with which England is studded, whose sole excuse for being is to provide residences for leisurely people. Perhaps a well or mineral spring is the nucleus round which, like the rolling snowball, the houses have gathered. Such a place is Cheltenham. It is nestled down amid the green vales of Gloucestershire, where the soft and nursing air baa gently forced its shrubs and climbing plants and trees until its streets present long vistas of spreading foliage and leaf-embowered houses. It has a great school, a favourite one with the army, so that among its 40,000 people are many who have come for a few years to educate their sons. It is so clean and restful, suoh a " well-bred sort of place," that I delight sometimes in flying there, away from the fog and hurry of London. It is to tell of a most eccentrie old gentleman who lived there that I write this letter. My lodgings were on the gronnd floor of a dainty little house, which looked out upon a little square. My quaint old landlady, who herself served my meals in the little sitting-room, came sometimes and chatted with me, and told me, with hor characteristic Gloucester accent, the story of the place. She had lived in Cheltenham nearly all her life, had been in service there, and now, in a green old age, " letting lodgings." She used often to confide her troubles about the " draw-ing-room lodger.'" He was the inhabitant of the floor above mine, and had lodged there for three years. He waß a retired general, and his only attendant and apparently his only friend and associate was his valet, who was as mute as Marcasse, the rat-catcher, in George Sand's story of "De Mauprats." The general, whom I used to see occasioaally, toddling along the hall or entering the house, was most regular in his habits. He arose every day at half-past two in the afternoon. His breakfast, which consisted of half a dozen odds and ends (for he liked a nibble here, a bite there), and served at half-past three to the minute. After breakfast he read the paper, the Times. This was the only journal, said good Mrs Gubb, ho ever took in, except an army journal. The Times, she informed me, he gave up for a whole month with every manifestation of hatred, abhorrence, and contempt, when it failed to substantiate the authorship of the Parnell letters; but he had to come back to it. About six o'clock he went to the club, where ho was believed to indulge in a cup of tea, and read one or two of the magazines. The general, his magazines read, would then inake up four of whist, shilling points, and play until exactly eleven o'clock. Then ho came homo to dinner, which was served in courses at half-past eleven o'clock to

the minute, and consisted of soap, fish, roast and pastry. When I was in Cheltenham in June last it was evident one day that something was going wrong upstairs. There was a maledication in every fall of the general's boot, I could hear his angry stamping, and feared lie would shake down my chandelier, or at least detach a piece of plaster. Nothing happened, however. The general seemed in some way to have relieved his mind, and I forgot all about the disturbance, and went to writing. In a few minutes, however, Mrs Gubb 'excitedly entered and flourished before my face a piece of paper. I saw it was a draft of a cheque or some such paper for £24,000, payable to Anton Hisla. " Well" ? I said interrogatively. Breathless Mrs Gubb then told me that some bank had had the impertinence—for thus the general was pleased to designate it—to write reminding him that he had deposited with them some two years before £24,000, and that, as they were not in the habit of paying interest on deposits, they thought, perhaps, he had forgotten that he had left the money with them. Now, as well as I could make out from the excited lady's tale, the general had forgotten all about this sum, and therein, I assume, lay the sting of the note from the bank, for it convicted him to himself of lack of method. He was proud of his methodical habits, and to learn from a presumptuous banker that he had been guilty of carelessness was a blow to his pride. So he called the valet, and (said Mrs Gubb) " this is what he told him : ' Anton,' said he, ' you have been a good servant to me for some years, and I want to show you that I appreciate your attendance and your faithfulnoss. So I make you a little present." Then he sits down to write and he looks up and Bays, ' Anton, what is your last name ?' and Anton says •'Hisla.' and spells it for him, and I'm blest if that crazy old man didn't make this here cheque for £24,000 out for Anton and give to him—to a man, mind you, he didn't even knew the name of— and he says, 1 There, — , that'll show these bankers how to mind their business ! These were his very words, and as he said them he waved his hand at Anton to get out of his sight, and picked up his paper and began to read." It seems that Anton, startled out of his usual passivity by this suddenly-acquired wealth, had brought her the cheque and told her about it, and asked if she thought it a good cheque, and how to find it out, and so on. Mrs Gubb had asked his permission to cousult me, though what was in my demeanour to suggest familiarity with £24,000 cheques I cannot imagine. My advice was severely practical, for I sent word that if the cheque were mine I shouldn't loose a second in cashing it. But this extraor-

diuary valet didn't hurry. Two days after he sent the cheque by letter to the London bank that had the money, and asked them to change the amount to hiE name, which they did after communicating with the general. Anton quietly continued his attendance, and the only difference I could see in the house was that Mrs Gubb treated the man with a deference only a shade less marked than she gave the master. At this juncture I left Cheltenham, nor did I return till last week. Mrs Gubb, aa a special favour, took me in, but informed me that she had ceased to let rooms. The first floor lodger, it seems, had in the meantime gone to his final earthly lodging house—the family vault—and had loft her an annuity of £100 a year. But she was bitter against his memory. Not that he had loft her so little, but that he had left Anton so much. For I now hearJ that a brother from some source" of his freakish generosity, had come to him and protested in behalf of hia (the brother's) children which additional impcrtinenco in oonnection with this sore subject, so enraged the old man that he ordered the brother out of the house, and quietly drew a new will, giving all his possessions absolutely to Anton. Upon his death trom apoplexy in September last, Anton thereupon came into nearly £200,000. He had not, she told me, appeared unduly elated over his extraordinary good fortune, uor did she think it would spoil him, and all he did was quietly to leave for Switzerland. I have a theory that Anton will buy a few foreign decorations and orders, and perhaps a German barony or French vicomtie, and loom up next season in London society. Ho will be rich, respectablo, quint, presentable,