Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1810 page)

“Now,” says the chairman, “I have told my story to start you all. Who comes next?” He took up a teetotum, and gave it a spin on the table. When it toppled over, it fell opposite me; upon which the chairman said, “It’s your turn next. Order! order! I call on the seafaring man to tell the second story!” He finished the words off with a knock of his hammer; and the Club (having nothing else to say, as I suppose) tried back, and once again sang out altogether, “Hear! hear!”

“I hope you will please to let me off,” I said to the chairman, “for the reason that I have got no story to tell.”

“No story to tell!” says he. “A sailor without a story! Who ever heard of such a thing? Nobody!”

“Nobody,” says the Club, bursting out altogether at last with a new word, by way of a change.

I can’t say I quite relished the chairman’s talking of me as if I was before the mast. A man likes his true quality to be known, when he is publicly spoken to among a party of strangers. I made my true quality known to the chairman and company, in these words:

“All men who follow the sea, gentlemen, are sailors,” I said. “But there’s degrees aboard ship as well as ashore. My rating, if you please, is the rating of a second mate.”

“Ay, ay, surely?” says the chairman. “Where did you leave your ship?”

“At the bottom of the sea,” I made answer — which was, I am sorry to say, only too true.

“What! you’ve been wrecked?” says he. “Tell us all about it. A shipwreck-story is just the sort of story we like. Silence there all down the table! — silence for the second mate!”

The Club, upon this, instead of keeping silence, broke out vehemently with another new word, and said, “Chair!” After which every man suddenly held his peace, and looked at me.

I did a very foolish thing. Without stopping to take counsel with myself, I started off at score, and did just what the chairman had bidden me. If they had waited the whole night long for it, I should never have told them the story they wanted from me at first, having all my life been a wretched bad hand at such matters — for the reason, as I take it, that a story is bound to be something which is not true. But when I found the company willing, on a sudden, to put up with nothing better than the account of my shipwreck (which is not a story at all), the unexpected luck of being let off with only telling the truth about myself, was too much of a temptation for me — so I up and told it.

I got on well enough with the storm, and the striking of the vessel, and the strange chance, afterwards, which proved to be the saving of my life — the assembly all listening (to my great surprise) as if they had never heard anything of the sort before. But, when the necessity came next for going further than this, and for telling them what had happened to me
after
the saving of my life — or, to put it plainer, for telling them what place I was cast away on, and what company I was cast away in — the words died straight off on my lips. For this reason — namely — that those particulars of my statement made up just that part of it which I couldn’t and durstn’t, let out to strangers — no, not if every man among them had offered me a hundred pounds apiece, on the spot, to do it!

“Go on!” says the chairman. “What happened next? How did you get on shore?”

Feeling what a fool I had been to run myself headlong into a scrape, for want of thinking before I spoke, I now cast about discreetly in my mind for the best means of finishing off-hand without letting out a word to the company concerning those particulars before mentioned. I was some little time before seeing my way to this; keeping the chairman and company, all the while, waiting for an answer. The Club, losing patience in consequence, got from staring hard at me to drumming with their feet and then to calling out lustily, “Go on! go on! Chair! Order!” — and such like. In the midst of this childish hubbub, I saw my way to what I considered to be rather a neat finish — and got on my legs to ease them all off with it handsomely.

“Hear! hear!” says the Club. “He’s going on again at last.”

“Gentlemen!” I made answer; “with your permission I will now conclude by wishing you all good night.” Saying which words, I gave them a friendly nod, to make things pleasant — and walked straight to the door. It’s hardly to be believed — though nevertheless quite true — that these curious men all howled and groaned at me directly, as if I had done them some grievous injury. Thinking I would try to pacify them with their own favourite catch-word, I said, “Hear! hear!” as civilly as might be, whereupon, they all returned for answer, “Oh! oh!” I never belonged to a club of any kind, myself; and, after what I saw of
that
Club, I don’t care if I never do.

My bedroom, when I found my way up to it, was large and airy enough, but not over-clean. There were two beds in it, not over-clean either. Both being empty, I had my choice. One was near the window, and one near the door. I thought the bed near the door looked a trifle the sweetest of the two; and took it.

After falling asleep, it was the grey of the morning before I woke. When I had fairly opened my eyes and shook up my memory into telling me where I was, I made two discoveries. First, that the room was a deal colder in the new morning, than it had been over-night. Second, that the other bed near the window had got some one sleeping in it. Not that I could see the man from where I lay; but I heard his breathing, plain enough. He must have come up into the room, of course, after I had fallen asleep — and he had tumbled himself quietly into bed without disturbing me. There was nothing wonderful in that; and nothing wonderful in the landlord letting the empty bed if he could find a customer for it. I turned, and tried to go to sleep again; but I was out of sorts — out of sorts so badly, that even the breathing of the man in the other bed fretted and worried me. After tumbling and tossing for a quarter of an hour or more, I got up for a change; and walked softly in my stockings, to the window, to look at the morning.

The heavens were brightening into daylight, and the mists were blowing off, past the window, like puffs of smoke. When I got even with the second bed, I stopped to look at the man in it. He lay, sound asleep, turned towards the window; and the end of the counterpane was drawn up over the lower half of his face. Something struck me, on a sudden, in his hair, and his forehead; and, though not an inquisitive man by nature, I stretched out my hand to the end of the counterpane, in spite of myself.

I uncovered his face softly; and there, in the morning light, I saw my brother, Alfred Raybrock.

What I ought to have done, or what other men might have done in my place, I don’t know. What I really did, was to drop back a step — to steady myself, with my hand, on the sill of the window — and to stand so, looking at him. Three years ago, I had said good-by to my wife, to my little child, to my old mother, and to brother Alfred here, asleep under my eyes. For all those three years, no news from me had reached them — and the underwriters, as I knew, must have long since reported that the ship I sailed in was lost, and that all hands on board had perished. My heart was heavy when I thought of my kindred at home, and of the weary time they must have waited and sorrowed before they gave me up for dead. Twice I reached out my hand, to wake Alfred, and to ask him about my wife and my child; and twice I drew it back again, in fear of what might happen if he saw me, standing by his bed-head in the grey morning, like Hugh Raybrock risen up from the grave.

I drew my hand back the second time, and waited a minute. In that minute he woke. I had not moved, or spoken a word, or touched him — I had only looked at him longingly. If such things could be, I should say it was my looking that woke him. His eyes, when they opened under mine, passed on a sudden from fast asleep to broad awake. They first settled on my face with a startled look — which passed directly. He lifted himself on his elbow, and opened his lips to speak, but never said a word. His eyes strained and strained into mine; and his face turned all over of a ghastly white. “Alfred!” I said, “don’t you know me?” There seemed to be a deadly terror pent up in him, and I thought my voice might set it free. I took fast hold of him by the hands, and spoke again. “Alfred!” I said —

Oh, sirs! where can a man like me find words to tell all that was said and all that was thought between us two brothers? Please to pardon my not saying more of it than I say here. We sat down together, side by side. The poor lad burst out crying — and got vent that way. I kept my hold of his hands, and waited a bit before I spoke to him again. I think I was worst off, now, of the two — no tears came to help
me
— I haven’t got my brother’s quickness, any way; and my troubles have roughened and hardened me, outside. But, God knows, I felt it keenly; all the more keenly, maybe, because I was slow to show it.

After a little, I put the questions to him which I had been longing to ask, from the time when I first saw his face on the pillow. Had they all given me up at home, for dead (I asked)? Yes; after long, long hoping, one by one they had given me up — my wife (God bless her!) last of all. I meant to ask next if my wife was alive and well; but, try as I might, I could only say “Margaret?” — and look hard in my brother’s face. He knew what I meant. Yes (he said), she was living; she was at home; she was in her widow’s weeds — poor soul! her widow’s weeds! I got on better with my next question about the child. Was it born alive? Yes. Boy or girl? Girl. And living now; and much grown? Living, surely, and grown — poor little thing, what a question to ask! — grown of course, in three years! And mother? Well, mother was a trifle fallen away, and more silent within herself than she used to be — fretting at times; fretting (like my wife) on nights when the sea rose, and the windows shook and shivered in the wind. Thereupon, my brother and I waited a bit again — I with my questions, and he with his answers — and while we waited, I thanked God, inwardly, with all my heart and soul, for bringing me back, living, to wife and kindred, while wife and kindred were living too.

My brother dried the tears off his face; and looked at me a little. Then he turned aside suddenly, as if he remembered something; and stole his hand in a hurry, under the pillow of his bed. Nothing came out from below the pillow but his black neck-handkerchief, which he now unfolded slowly, looking at me, all the while, with something strange in his face that I couldn’t make out.

“What are you doing?” I asked him. “What are you looking at me like that for?”

Instead of making answer, he took a crumpled morsel of paper out of his neck-handkerchief, opened it carefully, and held it to the light to let me see what it was. Lord in Heaven! — my own writing — the morsel of paper I had committed, long, long since, to the mercy of the deep. Thousands and thousands of miles away, I had trusted that Message to the waters — and here it was now, in my brother’s hands! A chilly fear came over me at the seeing it again. Scrap of paper as it was, it looked to my eyes like the ghost of my own past self, gone home before me invisibly over the great wastes of the sea.

My brother pointed down solemnly to the writing.

“Hugh,” he said, “were you in your right mind when you wrote those words?”

“Tell me first,” I made answer, “how and when the Message came to you. I can’t quiet myself fit to talk till I know that.”

He told me how the paper had come to hand — also, how his good friend, the captain, having promised to help him, was then under the same roof with our two selves. But there he stopped. It was not till later in the day that I heard of what had happened (through this dreadful doubt about the money) in the matter of his sweetheart and his marriage.

The knowledge that the Message had reached him by mortal means — on the word of a seaman, I half doubted it when I first set eyes on the paper! — eased me in my mind; and I now did my best to quiet Alfred, in my turn. I told him that I was in my right senses, though sorely troubled, when my hand had written those words. Also, that where the writing was rubbed out, I could tell him for his necessary guidance and mine, what once stood in the empty places. Also, that I knew no more what the real truth might be than he did, till inquiry was made, and the slander on father’s good name was dragged boldly into daylight to show itself for what it was worth. Lastly, that all the voyage home, there was one hope and one determination uppermost in my mind — the hope, that I might get safe to England, and find my wife and kindred alive to take me back among them again — the determination, that I would put the doubt about father’s five hundred pounds to the proof, if ever my feet touched English land once more.

“Come out with me now, Alfred,” I said, after winding up as above; “and let me tell you in the quiet of the morning how that Message came to be written and committed to the sea.”

We went down stairs softly, and let ourselves out without disturbing any one. The sun was just rising when we left the village and took our way slowly over the cliffs. As soon as the sea began to open on us, I returned to that true story of mine which I had left but half told, the night before — and, this time, I went through with it to the end.