The very first day that Cecil Mitford could call that coveted16 piece of ground his own, he could not restrain his eagerness (though he knew it was imprudent in a land where the unjust law of treasure-trove prevails), but he must then and there begin covertly17 digging under the shadow of the three big willow18 trees, in the bend of the[Pg 215] river. He had eyed and measured the bearings so carefully already that he knew the very spot to a nail's breadth where John Cann's treasure was actually hidden. He set to work digging with a little pick as confidently as if he had already seen the doubloons lying there in the strong box that he knew enclosed them. Four feet deep he dug, as John Cann's instructions told him; and then, true to the inch, his pick struck against a solid oaken box, well secured with clamps of iron. Cecil cleared all the dirt away from the top, carefully, not hurriedly, and tried with all his might to lift the box out, but all in vain. It was far too heavy, of course, for one man's arms to raise: all that weight of gold and silver must be ever so much more than a single pair of hands could possibly manage. He must try to open the lid alone, so as to take the gold out, a bit at a time, and carry it away with him now and again, as he was able, covering the place up carefully in between, for fear of the Treasury19 and the Lord of the Manor20. How abominably21 unjust it seemed to him at that moment—the legal claim of those two indolent hostile powers! to think that after he, Cecil Mitford, had borne the brunt of the labour in adventurously22 hunting up the whole trail of John Cann's secret, two idle irresponsible participators should come in at the end, if they could, to profit entirely23 by his ingenuity24 and his exertions25!
At last, by a great effort, he forced the rusty26 lock open, and looked eagerly into the strong oak chest. How his heart beat with slow, deep throbs27 at that supreme28 moment, not with suspense29, for he knew he should find the money, but with the final realization30 of a great hope long deferred31! Yes, there it lay, in very truth, all before him—great shining coins of old Spanish gold—gold, gold, gold, arranged in long rows, one coin after another, over the whole surface of the broad oak box. He had found it, he had found it, he had really found it! After so much toilsome hunting, after so much vain endeavour,[Pg 216] after so many heart-breaking disappointments, John Cann's treasure in very truth lay open there actually before him!
For a few minutes, eager and frightened as he was, Cecil Mitford did not dare even to touch the precious pieces. In the greatness of his joy, in the fierce rush of his overpowering emotions, he had no time to think of mere32 base everyday gold and silver. It was the future and the ideal that he beheld33, not the piled-up heaps of filthy34 lucre35. Ethel was his, wealth was his, honour was his! He would be a rich man and a great man now and henceforth for ever! Oh, how he hugged himself in his heart on the wise successful fraud by which he had induced Ethel to advance him the few wretched hundreds he needed for his ever-memorable Jamaican journey! How he praised to himself his own courage, and ingenuity, and determination, and inexhaustible patience! How he laughed down that foolish conscience of his that would fain have dissuaded36 him from his master-stroke of genius. He deserved it all, he deserved it all! Other men would have flinched37 before the risk and expense of the voyage to Jamaica, would have given up the scent38 for a fool's errand in the cemetery39 at Port Royal, would have shrunk from ransacking40 John Cann's grave at dead of night in the Cathedral precincts at Spanish Town, would have feared to buy the high-priced corner of land at Bovey Tracy on a pure imaginative speculation41. But he, Cecil Mitford, had had the boldness and the cleverness to do it every bit, and now, wisdom was justified42 of all her children. He sat for five minutes in profound meditation43 on the edge of the little pit he had dug, gloating dreamily over the broad gold pieces, and inwardly admiring his own bravery and foresight44 and indomitable resolution. What a magnificent man he really was—a worthy45 successor of those great freebooting, buccaneering, filibustering46 Devonians of the grand Elizabethan era! To think[Pg 217] that the worky-day modern world should ever have tried to doom47 him, Cecil Mitford, with his splendid enterprise and glorious potentialities, to a hundred and eighty a year and a routine clerkship at the Colonial Office!
After a while, however, mere numerical cupidity48 began to get the better of this heroic mood, and Cecil Mitford turned somewhat languidly to the vulgar task of counting the rows of doubloons. He counted up the foremost row carefully, and then for the first time perceived, to his intense surprise, that the row behind was not gold, but mere silver Mexican pistoles. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, but the fact was unmistakable; there was only one row of yellow gold in the top layer, and all the rest was merely bright and glittering silver. Strange that John Cann should have put coins of such small value near the top of his box: the rest of the gold must certainly be in successive layers down further. He lifted up the big gold doubloons in the first row, and then, to his blank horror and amazement49, came to—not more gold, not more silver, but—but—but—ay, incredible as it seemed, appalling50, horrifying—a wooden bottom!
Had John Cann, in his care and anxiety, put a layer of solid oak between each layer of gold and silver? Hardly that, the oak was too thick. In a moment Cecil Mitford had taken out all the coins of the first tier, and laid bare the oaken bottom. A few blows of the pick loosened the earth around, and then, oh horror, oh ghastly disappointment, oh unspeakable heart-sickening revelation, the whole box came out entire. It was only two inches deep altogether, including the cover—it was, in fact, a mere shallow tray or saucer, something like the sort of thin wooden boxes in which sets of dessert-knives or fish-knives are usually sold for wedding presents!
For the space of three seconds Cecil Mitford could not believe his eyes, and then, with a sudden flash of awful vividness, the whole terrible truth flashed at once across[Pg 218] his staggering brain. He had found John Cann's treasure indeed—the John Cann's treasure of base actual reality; but the John Cann's treasure of his fervid51 imagination, the John Cann's treasure he had dreamt of from his boyhood upward, the John Cann's treasure he had risked all to find and to win, did not exist, could not exist, and never had existed at all anywhere! It was all a horrible, incredible, unthinkable delusion52! The hideous53 fictions he had told would every one be now discovered; Ethel would be ruined; Aunt Emily would be ruined; and they would both know him, not only for a fool, a dreamer, and a visionary, but also for a gambler, a thief, and a liar4.
In his black despair he jumped down into the shallow hole once more, and began a second time to count slowly over the accursed dollars. The whole miserable sum—the untold54 wealth of John Cann's treasure—would amount altogether to about two hundred and twenty pounds of modern sterling55 English money. Cecil Mitford tore his hair as he counted it in impotent self punishment; two hundred and twenty pounds, and he had expected at least as many thousands! He saw it all in a moment. His wild fancy had mistaken the poor outcast hunted-down pirate for a sort of ideal criminal millionaire; he had erected56 the ignorant, persecuted57 John Cann of real life, who fled from the king's justice to a nest of chartered outlaws58 in Jamaica, into a great successful naval59 commander, like the Drake or Hawkins of actual history. The whole truth about the wretched solitary60 old robber burst in upon him now with startling vividness; he saw him hugging his paltry two hundred pounds to his miserly old bosom61, crossing the sea with it stealthily from Jamaica, burying it secretly in a hole in the ground at Bovey, quarrelling about it with his peasant relations in England, as the poor will often quarrel about mere trifles of money, and dying at last with the secret of that wretched sum[Pg 219] hidden in the snuff-box that he clutched with fierce energy even in his lifeless skeleton fingers. It was all clear, horribly, irretrievably, unmistakably clear to him now; and the John Cann that he had once followed through so many chances and changes had faded away at once into absolute nothingness, now and for ever!
If Cecil Mitford had known a little less about John Cann's life and exploits he might still perhaps have buoyed62 himself up with the vain hope that all the treasure was not yet unearthed—that there were more boxes still buried in the ground, more doubloons still hidden further down in the unexplored bosom of the little three-cornered field. But the words of John Cann's own dying directions were too explicit63 and clear to admit of any such gloss64 or false interpretation65. "In a strong oaken chest, bound round with iron, and buried at four feet of depth in the south-western angle of the Home Croft, at Bovey," said the document, plainly; there was no possibility of making two out of it in any way. Indeed, in that single minute, Cecil Mitford's mind had undergone a total revolution, and he saw the John Cann myth for the first time in his life now in its true colours. The bubble had burst, the halo had vanished, the phantom66 had faded away, and the miserable squalid miserly reality stood before him with all its vulgar nakedness in their place. The whole panorama67 of John Cann's life, as he knew it intimately in all its details, passed before his mind's eye like a vivid picture, no longer in the brilliant hues68 of boyish romance, but in the dingy69 sordid70 tones of sober fact. He had given up all that was worth having in this world for the sake of a poor gipsy pirate's penny-saving hoard71.
A weaker man would have swallowed the disappointment or kept the delusion still to his dying day. Cecil Mitford was made of stronger mould. The ideal John Cann's treasure had taken possession of him, body and soul; and now that John Cann's treasure had faded into[Pg 220] utter nonentity—a paltry two hundred pounds—the whole solid earth had failed beneath his feet, and nothing was left before him but a mighty72 blank. A mighty blank. Blank, blank, blank. Cecil Mitford sat there on the edge of the pit, with his legs dangling73 over into the hollow where John Cann's treasure had never been, gazing blankly out into a blank sky, with staring blank eyeballs that looked straight ahead into infinite space and saw utterly74 nothing.
How long he sat there no one knows; but late at night, when the people at the Red Lion began to miss their guest, and turned out in a body to hunt for him in the corner field, they found him sitting still on the edge of the pit he had dug for the grave of his own hopes, and gazing still with listless eyes into blank vacancy75. A box of loose coin lay idly scattered76 on the ground beside him. The poor gentleman had been struck crazy, they whispered to one another; and so indeed he had: not raving77 mad with acute insanity78, but blankly, hopelessly, and helplessly imbecile. With the loss of John Cann's treasure the whole universe had faded out for him into abject79 nihilism. They carried him home to the inn between them on their arms, and put him to bed carefully in the old bedroom, as one might put a new-born baby.
The Lord of the Manor, when he came to hear the whole pitiful story, would have nothing to do with the wretched doubloons; the curse of blood was upon them, he said, and worse than that; so the Treasury, which has no sentiments and no conscience, came in at the end for what little there was of John Cann's unholy treasure.
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1
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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liar
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| n.说谎的人 | |
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clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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appalled
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| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
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obstinacy
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| n.顽固；（病痛等）难治 | |
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antiquated
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| adj.陈旧的，过时的 | |
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curmudgeon
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| n. 脾气暴躁之人，守财奴，吝啬鬼 | |
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triangular
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| adj.三角（形）的，三者间的 | |
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intrigue
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| vt.激起兴趣，迷住；vi.耍阴谋；n.阴谋，密谋 | |
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paltry
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| adj.无价值的，微不足道的 | |
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coveted
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| adj.令人垂涎的；垂涎的，梦寐以求的v.贪求，觊觎(covet的过去分词)；垂涎；贪图 | |
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covertly
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| adv.偷偷摸摸地 | |
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18
willow
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| n.柳树 | |
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treasury
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| n.宝库；国库，金库；文库 | |
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manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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abominably
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| adv. 可恶地，可恨地，恶劣地 | |
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adventurously
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| adv.爱冒险地 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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exertions
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| n.努力( exertion的名词复数 )；费力；（能力、权力等的）运用；行使 | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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throbs
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| 体内的跳动( throb的名词复数 ) | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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30
realization
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| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
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deferred
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| adj.延期的，缓召的v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的过去式和过去分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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lucre
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| n.金钱，财富 | |
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dissuaded
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| 劝（某人）勿做某事，劝阻( dissuade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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flinched
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| v.（因危险和痛苦）退缩，畏惧( flinch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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39
cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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ransacking
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| v.彻底搜查( ransack的现在分词 )；抢劫，掠夺 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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42
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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43
meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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44
foresight
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| n.先见之明，深谋远虑 | |
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45
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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46
filibustering
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| v.阻碍或延宕国会或其他立法机构通过提案( filibuster的现在分词 )；掠夺 | |
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47
doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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48
cupidity
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| n.贪心，贪财 | |
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49
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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50
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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51
fervid
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| adj.热情的；炽热的 | |
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52
delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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53
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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54
untold
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| adj.数不清的，无数的 | |
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55
sterling
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| adj.英币的(纯粹的，货真价实的)；n.英国货币(英镑) | |
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56
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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57
persecuted
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| （尤指宗教或政治信仰的）迫害(~sb. for sth.)( persecute的过去式和过去分词 )； 烦扰，困扰或骚扰某人 | |
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outlaws
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| 歹徒，亡命之徒( outlaw的名词复数 )； 逃犯 | |
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59
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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60
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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61
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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62
buoyed
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| v.使浮起( buoy的过去式和过去分词 )；支持；为…设浮标；振奋…的精神 | |
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63
explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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64
gloss
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| n.光泽，光滑；虚饰；注释；vt.加光泽于；掩饰 | |
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65
interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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panorama
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| n.全景，全景画，全景摄影，全景照片[装置] | |
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hues
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| 色彩( hue的名词复数 )； 色调； 信仰； 观点 | |
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dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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71
hoard
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| n./v.窖藏，贮存，囤积 | |
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72
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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73
dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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74
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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75
vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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76
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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77
raving
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| adj.说胡话的；疯狂的，怒吼的；非常漂亮的；令人醉心[痴心]的v.胡言乱语(rave的现在分词)n.胡话；疯话adv.胡言乱语地；疯狂地 | |
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insanity
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| n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐 | |
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abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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