Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1808 page)

“This is my poor brother’s writing!”

“I suppose so,” said Captain Jorgan.  “I’ll take a look out of this little window while you read it.”

“Pray no, sir!  I should be hurt.  My brother couldn’t know it would fall into such hands as yours.”

The captain sat down again on the foot of the bed, and the young man opened the folded paper with a trembling hand, and spread it on the table.  The ragged paper, evidently creased and torn both before and after being written on, was much blotted and stained, and the ink had faded and run, and many words were wanting.  What the captain and the young fisherman made out together, after much re-reading and much humouring of the folds of the paper, is given on the next page.

The young fisherman had become more and more agitated, as the writing had become clearer to him.  He now left it lying before the captain, over whose shoulder he had been reading it, and dropping into his former seat, leaned forward on the table and laid his face in his hands.

“What, man,” urged the captain, “don’t give in!  Be up and doing
like
a man!”

“It is selfish, I know, — but doing what, doing what?” cried the young fisherman, in complete despair, and stamping his sea-boot on the ground.

“Doing what?” returned the captain.  “Something!  I’d go down to the little breakwater below yonder, and take a wrench at one of the salt-rusted iron rings there, and either wrench it up by the roots or wrench my teeth out of my head, sooner than I’d do nothing.  Nothing!” ejaculated the captain.  “Any fool or fainting heart can do
that
, and nothing can come of nothing, — which was pretended to be found out, I believe, by one of them Latin critters,” said the captain with the deepest disdain; “as if Adam hadn’t found it out, afore ever he so much as named the beasts!”

Yet the captain saw, in spite of his bold words, that there was some greater reason than he yet understood for the young man’s distress.  And he eyed him with a sympathising curiosity.

“Come, come!” continued the captain, “Speak out.  What is it, boy!”

“You have seen how beautiful she is, sir,” said the young man, looking up for the moment, with a flushed face and rumpled hair.

“Did any man ever say she warn’t beautiful?” retorted the captain.  “If so, go and lick him.”

The young man laughed fretfully in spite of himself, and said —

“It’s not that, it’s not that.”

“Wa’al, then, what is it?” said the captain in a more soothing tone.

The young fisherman mournfully composed himself to tell the captain what it was, and began: “We were to have been married next Monday week — ”

“Were to have been!” interrupted Captain Jorgan.  “And are to be?  Hey?”

Young Raybrock shook his head, and traced out with his fore-finger the words, “
poor father’s five hundred pounds
,” in the written paper.

“Go along,” said the captain.  “Five hundred pounds?  Yes?”

“That sum of money,” pursued the young fisherman, entering with the greatest earnestness on his demonstration, while the captain eyed him with equal earnestness, “was all my late father possessed.  When he died, he owed no man more than he left means to pay, but he had been able to lay by only five hundred pounds.”

“Five hundred pounds,” repeated the captain.  “Yes?”

“In his lifetime, years before, he had expressly laid the money aside to leave to my mother, — like to settle upon her, if I make myself understood.”

“Yes?”

“He had risked it once — my father put down in writing at that time, respecting the money — and was resolved never to risk it again.”

“Not a spectator,” said the captain.  “My country wouldn’t have suited him.  Yes?”

“My mother has never touched the money till now.  And now it was to have been laid out, this very next week, in buying me a handsome share in our neighbouring fishery here, to settle me in life with Kitty.”

The captain’s face fell, and he passed and repassed his sun-browned right hand over his thin hair, in a discomfited manner.

“Kitty’s father has no more than enough to live on, even in the sparing way in which we live about here.  He is a kind of bailiff or steward of manor rights here, and they are not much, and it is but a poor little office.  He was better off once, and Kitty must never marry to mere drudgery and hard living.”

The captain still sat stroking his thin hair, and looking at the young fisherman.

“I am as certain that my father had no knowledge that any one was wronged as to this money, or that any restitution ought to be made, as I am certain that the sun now shines.  But, after this solemn warning from my brother’s grave in the sea, that the money is Stolen Money,” said Young Raybrock, forcing himself to the utterance of the words, “can I doubt it?  Can I touch it?”

“About not doubting, I ain’t so sure,” observed the captain; “but about not touching — no — I don’t think you can.”

“See then,” said Young Raybrock, “why I am so grieved.  Think of Kitty.  Think what I have got to tell her!”

His heart quite failed him again when he had come round to that, and he once more beat his sea-boot softly on the floor.  But not for long; he soon began again, in a quietly resolute tone.

“However!  Enough of that!  You spoke some brave words to me just now, Captain Jorgan, and they shall not be spoken in vain.  I have got to do something.  What I have got to do, before all other things, is to trace out the meaning of this paper, for the sake of the Good Name that has no one else to put it right.  And still for the sake of the Good Name, and my father’s memory, not a word of this writing must be breathed to my mother, or to Kitty, or to any human creature.  You agree in this?”

“I don’t know what they’ll think of us below,” said the captain, “but for certain I can’t oppose it.  Now, as to tracing.  How will you do?”

They both, as by consent, bent over the paper again, and again carefully puzzled out the whole of the writing.

“I make out that this would stand, if all the writing was here, ‘Inquire among the old men living there, for’ — some one.  Most like, you’ll go to this village named here?” said the captain, musing, with his finger on the name.

“Yes!  And Mr. Tregarthen is a Cornishman, and — to be sure! — comes from Lanrean.”

“Does he?” said the captain quietly.  “As I ain’t acquainted with him, who may
he
be?”

“Mr. Tregarthen is Kitty’s father.”

“Ay, ay!” cried the captain.  “Now you speak!  Tregarthen knows this village of Lanrean, then?”

“Beyond all doubt he does.  I have often heard him mention it, as being his native place.  He knows it well.”

“Stop half a moment,” said the captain.  “We want a name here.  You could ask Tregarthen (or if you couldn’t I could) what names of old men he remembers in his time in those diggings?  Hey?”

“I can go straight to his cottage, and ask him now.”

“Take me with you,” said the captain, rising in a solid way that had a most comfortable reliability in it, “and just a word more first.  I have knocked about harder than you, and have got along further than you.  I have had, all my sea-going life long, to keep my wits polished bright with acid and friction, like the brass cases of the ship’s instruments.  I’ll keep you company on this expedition.  Now you don’t live by talking any more than I do.  Clench that hand of yours in this hand of mine, and that’s a speech on both sides.”

Captain Jorgan took command of the expedition with that hearty shake.  He at once refolded the paper exactly as before, replaced it in the bottle, put the stopper in, put the oilskin over the stopper, confided the whole to Young Raybrock’s keeping, and led the way down-stairs.

But it was harder navigation below-stairs than above.  The instant they set foot in the parlour the quick, womanly eye detected that there was something wrong.  Kitty exclaimed, frightened, as she ran to her lover’s side, “Alfred!  What’s the matter?”  Mrs. Raybrock cried out to the captain, “Gracious! what have you done to my son to change him like this all in a minute?”  And the young widow — who was there with her work upon her arm — was at first so agitated that she frightened the little girl she held in her hand, who hid her face in her mother’s skirts and screamed.  The captain, conscious of being held responsible for this domestic change, contemplated it with quite a guilty expression of countenance, and looked to the young fisherman to come to his rescue.

“Kitty, darling,” said Young Raybrock, “Kitty, dearest love, I must go away to Lanrean, and I don’t know where else or how much further, this very day.  Worse than that — our marriage, Kitty, must be put off, and I don’t know for how long.”

Kitty stared at him, in doubt and wonder and in anger, and pushed him from her with her hand.

“Put off?” cried Mrs. Raybrock.  “The marriage put off?  And you going to Lanrean!  Why, in the name of the dear Lord?”

“Mother dear, I can’t say why; I must not say why.  It would be dishonourable and undutiful to say why.”

“Dishonourable and undutiful?” returned the dame.  “And is there nothing dishonourable or undutiful in the boy’s breaking the heart of his own plighted love, and his mother’s heart too, for the sake of the dark secrets and counsels of a wicked stranger?  Why did you ever come here?” she apostrophised the innocent captain.  “Who wanted you?  Where did you come from?  Why couldn’t you rest in your own bad place, wherever it is, instead of disturbing the peace of quiet unoffending folk like us?”

“And what,” sobbed the poor little Kitty, “have I ever done to you, you hard and cruel captain, that you should come and serve me so?”

And then they both began to weep most pitifully, while the captain could only look from the one to the other, and lay hold of himself by the coat collar.

“Margaret,” said the poor young fisherman, on his knees at Kitty’s feet, while Kitty kept both her hands before her tearful face, to shut out the traitor from her view, — but kept her fingers wide asunder and looked at him all the time, — ”Margaret, you have suffered so much, so uncomplainingly, and are always so careful and considerate!  Do take my part, for poor Hugh’s sake!”

The quiet Margaret was not appealed to in vain.  “I will, Alfred,” she returned, “and I do.  I wish this gentleman had never come near us;” whereupon the captain laid hold of himself the tighter; “but I take your part for all that.  I am sure you have some strong reason and some sufficient reason for what you do, strange as it is, and even for not saying why you do it, strange as that is.  And, Kitty darling, you are bound to think so more than any one, for true love believes everything, and bears everything, and trusts everything.  And, mother dear, you are bound to think so too, for you know you have been blest with good sons, whose word was always as good as their oath, and who were brought up in as true a sense of honour as any gentleman in this land.  And I am sure you have no more call, mother, to doubt your living son than to doubt your dead son; and for the sake of the dear dead, I stand up for the dear living.”

“Wa’al now,” the captain struck in, with enthusiasm, “this I say, That whether your opinions flatter me or not, you are a young woman of sense, and spirit, and feeling; and I’d sooner have you by my side in the hour of danger, than a good half of the men I’ve ever fallen in with — or fallen out with, ayther.”

Margaret did not return the captain’s compliment, or appear fully to reciprocate his good opinion, but she applied herself to the consolation of Kitty, and of Kitty’s mother-in-law that was to have been next Monday week, and soon restored the parlour to a quiet condition.

“Kitty, my darling,” said the young fisherman, “I must go to your father to entreat him still to trust me in spite of this wretched change and mystery, and to ask him for some directions concerning Lanrean.  Will you come home?  Will you come with me, Kitty?”

Kitty answered not a word, but rose sobbing, with the end of her simple head-dress at her eyes.  Captain Jorgan followed the lovers out, quite sheepishly, pausing in the shop to give an instruction to Mr. Pettifer.