Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1807 page)

“Perhaps you’ll come into my parlour, sir, and take a chair?” said Mrs. Raybrock.

“Ex-actly what I was going to propose myself, ma’am.  After you.”

Thus replying, and enjoining Tom to give an eye to the shop, Captain Jorgan followed Mrs. Raybrock into the little, low back-room, — decorated with divers plants in pots, tea-trays, old china teapots, and punch-bowls, — which was at once the private sitting-room of the Raybrock family and the inner cabinet of the post-office of the village of Steepways.

“Now, ma’am,” said the captain, “it don’t signify a cent to you where I was born, except — ”  But here the shadow of some one entering fell upon the captain’s figure, and he broke off to double himself up, slap both his legs, and ejaculate, “Never knew such a thing in all my life!  Here he is again!  How are you?”

These words referred to the young fellow who had so taken Captain Jorgan’s fancy down at the pier.  To make it all quite complete he came in accompanied by the sweetheart whom the captain had detected looking over the wall.  A prettier sweetheart the sun could not have shone upon that shining day.  As she stood before the captain, with her rosy lips just parted in surprise, her brown eyes a little wider open than was usual from the same cause, and her breathing a little quickened by the ascent (and possibly by some mysterious hurry and flurry at the parlour door, in which the captain had observed her face to be for a moment totally eclipsed by the Sou’wester hat), she looked so charming, that the captain felt himself under a moral obligation to slap both his legs again.  She was very simply dressed, with no other ornament than an autumnal flower in her bosom.  She wore neither hat nor bonnet, but merely a scarf or kerchief, folded squarely back over the head, to keep the sun off, — according to a fashion that may be sometimes seen in the more genial parts of England as well as of Italy, and which is probably the first fashion of head-dress that came into the world when grasses and leaves went out.

“In my country,” said the captain, rising to give her his chair, and dexterously sliding it close to another chair on which the young fisherman must necessarily establish himself, — ”in my country we should call Devonshire beauty first-rate!”

Whenever a frank manner is offensive, it is because it is strained or feigned; for there may be quite as much intolerable affectation in plainness as in mincing nicety.  All that the captain said and did was honestly according to his nature; and his nature was open nature and good nature; therefore, when he paid this little compliment, and expressed with a sparkle or two of his knowing eye, “I see how it is, and nothing could be better,” he had established a delicate confidence on that subject with the family.

“I was saying to your worthy mother,” said the captain to the young man, after again introducing himself by name and occupation, — ”I was saying to your mother (and you’re very like her) that it didn’t signify where I was born, except that I was raised on question-asking ground, where the babies as soon as ever they come into the world, inquire of their mothers, ‘Neow, how old may
you
be, and wa’at air you a goin’ to name me?’ — which is a fact.”  Here he slapped his leg.  “Such being the case, I may be excused for asking you if your name’s Alfred?”

“Yes, sir, my name is Alfred,” returned the young man.

“I am not a conjurer,” pursued the captain, “and don’t think me so, or I shall right soon undeceive you.  Likewise don’t think, if you please, though I
do
come from that country of the babies, that I am asking questions for question-asking’s sake, for I am not.  Somebody belonging to you went to sea?”

“My elder brother, Hugh,” returned the young man.  He said it in an altered and lower voice, and glanced at his mother, who raised her hands hurriedly, and put them together across her black gown, and looked eagerly at the visitor.

“No!  For God’s sake, don’t think that!” said the captain, in a solemn way; “I bring no good tidings of him.”

There was a silence, and the mother turned her face to the fire and put her hand between it and her eyes.  The young fisherman slightly motioned toward the window, and the captain, looking in that direction, saw a young widow, sitting at a neighbouring window across a little garden, engaged in needlework, with a young child sleeping on her bosom.  The silence continued until the captain asked of Alfred, —

“How long is it since it happened?”

“He shipped for his last voyage better than three years ago.”

“Ship struck upon some reef or rock, as I take it,” said the captain, “and all hands lost?”

“Yes.”

“Wa’al!” said the captain, after a shorter silence, “Here I sit who may come to the same end, like enough.  He holds the seas in the hollow of His hand.  We must all strike somewhere and go down.  Our comfort, then, for ourselves and one another is to have done our duty.  I’d wager your brother did his!”

“He did!” answered the young fisherman.  “If ever man strove faithfully on all occasions to do his duty, my brother did.  My brother was not a quick man (anything but that), but he was a faithful, true, and just man.  We were the sons of only a small tradesman in this county, sir; yet our father was as watchful of his good name as if he had been a king.”

“A precious sight more so, I hope — bearing in mind the general run of that class of crittur,” said the captain.  “But I interrupt.”

“My brother considered that our father left the good name to us, to keep clear and true.”

“Your brother considered right,” said the captain; “and you couldn’t take care of a better legacy.  But again I interrupt.”

“No; for I have nothing more to say.  We know that Hugh lived well for the good name, and we feel certain that he died well for the good name.  And now it has come into my keeping.  And that’s all.”

“Well spoken!” cried the captain.  “Well spoken, young man!  Concerning the manner of your brother’s death,” — by this time the captain had released the hand he had shaken, and sat with his own broad, brown hands spread out on his knees, and spoke aside, — ”concerning the manner of your brother’s death, it may be that I have some information to give you; though it may not be, for I am far from sure.  Can we have a little talk alone?”

The young man rose; but not before the captain’s quick eye had noticed that, on the pretty sweetheart’s turning to the window to greet the young widow with a nod and a wave of the hand, the young widow had held up to her the needlework on which she was engaged, with a patient and pleasant smile.  So the captain said, being on his legs, —

“What might she be making now?”

“What is Margaret making, Kitty?” asked the young fisherman, — with one of his arms apparently mislaid somewhere.

As Kitty only blushed in reply, the captain doubled himself up as far as he could, standing, and said, with a slap of his leg, —

“In my country we should call it wedding-clothes.  Fact!  We should, I do assure you.”

But it seemed to strike the captain in another light too; for his laugh was not a long one, and he added, in quite a gentle tone, —

“And it’s very pretty, my dear, to see her — poor young thing, with her fatherless child upon her bosom — giving up her thoughts to your home and your happiness.  It’s very pretty, my dear, and it’s very good.  May your marriage be more prosperous than hers, and be a comfort to her too.  May the blessed sun see you all happy together, in possession of the good name, long after I have done ploughing the great salt field that is never sown!”

Kitty answered very earnestly, “O!  Thank you, sir, with all my heart!”  And, in her loving little way, kissed her hand to him, and possibly by implication to the young fisherman, too, as the latter held the parlour-door open for the captain to pass out.

CHAPTER II — THE MONEY

“The stairs are very narrow, sir,” said Alfred Raybrock to Captain Jorgan.

“Like my cabin-stairs,” returned the captain, “on many a voyage.”

“And they are rather inconvenient for the head.”

“If my head can’t take care of itself by this time, after all the knocking about the world it has had,” replied the captain, as unconcernedly as if he had no connection with it, “it’s not worth looking after.”

Thus they came into the young fisherman’s bedroom, which was as perfectly neat and clean as the shop and parlour below; though it was but a little place, with a sliding window, and a phrenological ceiling expressive of all the peculiarities of the house-roof.  Here the captain sat down on the foot of the bed, and glancing at a dreadful libel on Kitty which ornamented the wall, — the production of some wandering limner, whom the captain secretly admired as having studied portraiture from the figure-heads of ships, — motioned to the young man to take the rush-chair on the other side of the small round table.  That done, the captain put his hand in the deep breast-pocket of his long-skirted blue coat, and took out of it a strong square case-bottle, — not a large bottle, but such as may be seen in any ordinary ship’s medicine-chest.  Setting this bottle on the table without removing his hand from it, Captain Jorgan then spake as follows: —

“In my last voyage homeward-bound,” said the captain, “and that’s the voyage off of which I now come straight, I encountered such weather off the Horn as is not very often met with, even there.  I have rounded that stormy Cape pretty often, and I believe I first beat about there in the identical storms that blew the Devil’s horns and tail off, and led to the horns being worked up into tooth-picks for the plantation overseers in my country, who may be seen (if you travel down South, or away West, fur enough) picking their teeth with ‘em, while the whips, made of the tail, flog hard.  In this last voyage, homeward-bound for Liverpool from South America, I say to you, my young friend, it blew.  Whole measures!  No half measures, nor making believe to blow; it blew!  Now I warn’t blown clean out of the water into the sky, — though I expected to be even that, — but I was blown clean out of my course; and when at last it fell calm, it fell dead calm, and a strong current set one way, day and night, night and day, and I drifted — drifted — drifted — out of all the ordinary tracks and courses of ships, and drifted yet, and yet drifted.  It behooves a man who takes charge of fellow-critturs’ lives, never to rest from making himself master of his calling.  I never did rest, and consequently I knew pretty well (‘specially looking over the side in the dead calm of that strong current) what dangers to expect, and what precautions to take against ‘em.  In short, we were driving head on to an island.  There was no island in the chart, and, therefore, you may say it was ill-manners in the island to be there; I don’t dispute its bad breeding, but there it was.  Thanks be to Heaven, I was as ready for the island as the island was ready for me.  I made it out myself from the masthead, and I got enough way upon her in good time to keep her off.  I ordered a boat to be lowered and manned, and went in that boat myself to explore the island.  There was a reef outside it, and, floating in a corner of the smooth water within the reef, was a heap of sea-weed, and entangled in that sea-weed was this bottle.”

Here the captain took his hand from the bottle for a moment, that the young fisherman might direct a wondering glance at it; and then replaced his band and went on: —

“If ever you come — or even if ever you don’t come — to a desert place, use you your eyes and your spy-glass well; for the smallest thing you see may prove of use to you; and may have some information or some warning in it.  That’s the principle on which I came to see this bottle.  I picked up the bottle and ran the boat alongside the island, and made fast and went ashore armed, with a part of my boat’s crew.  We found that every scrap of vegetation on the island (I give it you as my opinion, but scant and scrubby at the best of times) had been consumed by fire.  As we were making our way, cautiously and toilsomely, over the pulverised embers, one of my people sank into the earth breast-high.  He turned pale, and ‘Haul me out smart, shipmates,’ says he, ‘for my feet are among bones.’  We soon got him on his legs again, and then we dug up the spot, and we found that the man was right, and that his feet had been among bones.  More than that, they were human bones; though whether the remains of one man, or of two or three men, what with calcination and ashes, and what with a poor practical knowledge of anatomy, I can’t undertake to say.  We examined the whole island and made out nothing else, save and except that, from its opposite side, I sighted a considerable tract of land, which land I was able to identify, and according to the bearings of which (not to trouble you with my log) I took a fresh departure.  When I got aboard again I opened the bottle, which was oilskin-covered as you see, and glass-stoppered as you see.  Inside of it,” pursued the captain, suiting his action to his words, “I found this little crumpled, folded paper, just as you see.  Outside of it was written, as you see, these words: ‘Whoever finds this, is solemnly entreated by the dead to convey it unread to Alfred Raybrock, Steepways, North Devon, England.’  A sacred charge,” said the captain, concluding his narrative, “and, Alfred Raybrock, there it is!”